Page 102 of Never Submit

She’s whimpering, and now I’m the one torn. Do I comfort her? Do I take her in my arms and tell her she doesn't have to do this, that I’ll make sure she never hurts again?

Or do I approach her as the alpha? Using my voice of command on her, ordering her to do as she’s told, may make the transition a bit easier on her.

“The more you practice, the better it will be,” I assure her. “Faster. Less pain.”

She shakes her head and the patches of fur disappear back into her skin. “I’m never going to get this.”

She’s frustrated, something I understand, something I’ve bitterly struggled against myself in the past.

“You will.”

“I’ve failed so much in my life, Mathis. You have no idea.” She shifts her hip to the side, staring at me for a long moment as she wraps her arms around her chest. The chill in the air doesn’t bother her the way it used to. Has she noticed it yet, I wonder, how she walks around the camp in the T-shirt and light red hoodie? No coat?

“I wanted to try riding a horse once. Which seems cliché, of course. I got spooked when the horse neighed at me, and I never went back. Same thing with singing,” she tells me. “I tried karaoke once with my friends. I never even made it to the stage.”

“This isn’t one of your hobbies. Or something you think you’re going to try. This is your life. You are a wolf.”

“But why?” she explodes, her hands going into the air. Her scent ramps up to levels I can’t ignore until I feel like I’m drowning in her. “Why did the Goddess chooseme? I never asked to absorb the Moonstone. It just happened.”

“Yes, it happened,” I insist. “The Goddess chose you. What are you going to do now?”

“Gripe about it, apparently. And fail.”

“It’s not a failure. Do you think it came easily to me, what I had to do?” I toss it out as I approach her, resting my hands on her shoulders.

She’s trembling with a combination of frustration and confusion. The full moon is only going to make it worse. Tonight, tomorrow, and the next day, the lure will be too much for Ren to ignore.

Ren twists her face into a smirk. “Everything seems to come easy to you.”

“Well, I’m glad you think so, sweetheart, because I wouldn’t want you or anyone else to think otherwise of me. But I wasn’t always an alpha. Once I was a kid, too. And I didn’t have horseback riding or singing lessons.”

“Then what did little baby Mathis Blake have instead?”

Ren gets me riled up on a good day. When she uses my name that way?Fuck me.

I run my hand through my hair before scrubbing it down the side of my face. My wolf prowls closer in a bid fornearness. To get close to her. To mark her the way I’ve wanted to mark her from the start.

“I had archery,” I tell her with a slight smile. “I had target practice. Would you believe I’m a crack shot? I shot my first squirrel at ten and then my father handed it off to some of our omegas. They made stew. I was never so proud of myself.”

“Squirrel stew?” Ren makes a barf face.

“Hey, don’t knock it until you’ve had a chance to try it. Flora is definitely one of the best cooks we’ve got. You’ve tasted her cooking for yourself.”

The mention of Flora does exactly what I wanted it to do. It gets Ren out of her overthinking and back into the present moment. She stares at me, her nostrils flared.

“The first time I changed, I was a little nervous. I wasn’t sure I’d ever be as good as my father at anything I’ve had to do in my life. Because to me, he was the best. The best dad, the best alpha, the quickest to shift, all of it. And a fantastic mate to my mom.”

Hearing the word widens her eyes. “Your parents were mates?”

I nod. “They were. And I knew that if they could weather the storms together that I’d be able to do anything. Which still didn’t stop me from being nervous when it came time to change. You have to listen to your body. Now, shut your eyes.”

Ren obeys much faster this time, standing rooted to the ground, her eyes squeezed shut. “Okay.”

I pitch my tone low and instill a bit of command into every syllable. Something Ren may not recognize right away but something she’ll feel inside of her. It will help calm her down.

“My father took me out into the woods outside of ourcabin where I always used to play. There were other kids in our pack around the same age as me but he wanted it to be special, just the two of us. He walked me through it, and when I was halfway shifted, he changed as well. Showed me how it was done.”

“My mom is a dentist,” Ren replies. “Well,wasa dentist. She and Dad died in a car crash five years ago, but she always was very no-nonsense. She knew the steps and the procedures to anything in her life. Which always made it seem so strange that she and Dad told me all those stories about the local deity who saved me. I mean, why would they have thought to go that route in the first place? Where did they hear the stories?”

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