Page 8 of Pack to the Wall

“Just say it,” I muttered, getting impatient. I didn’t know where he was going and I didn’t want this to drag out.

He grunted. “We’re werewolves. Wolf shifters to be precise. Not all of us are wolves, but most of us are.”

With everything else that had happened today, I couldn’t help but laugh. Yeah… right… werewolves. The more I thought about it, the funnier it got.

“Well…” Tyson said, laughing a little with me. “That’s better than the usual reaction.” Then he sighed. “But I don’t think you believe me. So…” There was a long silence, though I did hear what sounded like the rustling of cloth. After that… I heard the strangest sound: creepy and awful, like someone cracking their knuckles, if they had a thousand knuckles.

“Open your eyes.” I could barely understand his words, they were slurred and awkward.

I didn’t want to open my eyes. If I didn’t, then I could remain in my own quiet oblivion a little longer. But if I did… I knew what I’d see. He was going to show me proof of his claim and I just… couldn’t… that wasn’t…

I peeked open one eyelid again… seeing only a fur-covered leg where his head had been. I slammed that lid shut quickly.

Nope, definitely not opening them anymore. Werewolves weren’t real. This wasn’t happening. This had to be some terrible dream. If I just waited, I’d wake up and get dressed and go to work.

Work.

Fuck!

If this wasn’t a dream, I was going to be horribly late for work! It was an hour’s drive to Reston, and that was assuming traffic wasn’t horrible on the 267. But… no, this was a dream it had to be. Please God, let it be a dream!

“We don’t have time for this!” a woman said, voice low and gravelly. Then someone slapped my face, startling me. The act was immediately followed by a growl, a very inhuman growl.

“Mom! Don’t!” These words were slurred like the ones before.

Mom?

I opened my eyes, confused and alarmed.

Sitting on the couch next to me was a tough-looking woman in biker’s leathers, and next to her… was a monster.

I screamed, scrambling away, climbing the arm of the couch and sitting there with my back to the front window.

The beast seemed to be half man and half wolf. The head was all wolf, but the body had the rough figure of a man, just… covered in fur. It stood on two legs, but the legs were bent all wrong. What really caught my attention were the claws on its massive hands, and the fangs in that canine mouth. That and the size. The beast was huge. I couldn’t stop screaming.

Behind the creature, Izzy and Milo hurried out from the back hall to see what had shocked me. Izzy’s eyes went wide and she screamed.

Milo grinned and shouted, “I knew it!”

For some reason that made me stop screaming. My thirteen-year-old son wasn’t scared at all?

The creature shifted and seemed to collapse in on itself. That horrid noise of popping bones returned, making me shiver in revulsion. A moment later, in the beast’s place, was Tyson, a very well-muscled and very naked man.

“Believe me now?” he asked.

I couldn’t stop staring at him. A part of my brain couldn’t register what it had just seen. It had to have been a delusion. Yet, another partdidbelieve. And that belief was shattering everything I knew about the world.

A third part of my brain — a part that hadn’t had sex in ten years, since my ex-husband had left me — made my eyes roam over that incredibly sexy body.

Tyson was averyhandsome man. I didn’t usually go for tattoos, but his bad boy look made him seem all the sexier, forbidden and dangerous. And when my eyes inevitably dipped down…

Wow! Even limp that dick was like something out of a fantasy… or porn.

Tyson didn’t seem to care that he was naked in my living room as he took his time putting his clothes back on.

It was Milo who broke the heavy silence which had settled over all of us. “I knew it! That’s so cool! Hey Mom, can I be a werewol?—?”

“No!” Tyson and I shouted at the same time.

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