Page 113 of Never Submit

And on an entirely different level, Iwantto show him. Pride lights me up like small bubbles of power in my veins. “Right now?” I murmur.

“Go on, if you’re comfortable,” Mathis urges.

I’m reluctant to pull my hand from his, even when I know the contact is there in my head through our bond.

Noble is there too in this tangled web of energy connecting the three of us. Finally, I step away from Mathis and hold my arms out, lifting them overhead. Drawing in a breath and feeling the soft light of the full moon wash over me.

I do feel the sway more. This place is quiet, peaceful, like someone’s hit the pause button on my life and I’m finally able to breathe. With the moonbathing the forest in a velvety glow, it’s much easier to feel the part of me I’ve pushed down since I absorbed the Moonstone.

The swish of the wind through the trees and the crunch of dead leaves and thick snow underfoot…this isn’t my world. And yet it is.Now. It’s theirs, and so it’s mine.

When we get back to camp, things aren’t going to stay this way. It’s a tender moment, trapped in time like a mosquito in amber, and I want to make sure I’m present for every single bit of it.

However, the change is still too new. It’s terrifying and unnatural even when it’s the most natural thing in the world. My body knows exactly what to do but it’s taking my mind so much longer to catch up.

The shift takes over and warps my bones. There’s pain, of course. I wonder if there will always be that small but potent agony or if eventually it will seem like second nature to float in the sea of it. It’s less intense, it seems, when the moon is full. Just like Mathis said.

My arms lengthen, my bones cracking and reshaping until my hands are no longer fingers but paws and claws.

I am the white wolf, and she is me.

Maybe this is what I was born to be from the beginning, and I had to be born dead in order to become this now.

Those thoughts slip away when Mathis steps forward. He shudders and bends. Twisting his chest to the sky as his own wolf pushes to the surface.

“A thing of beauty. Fucking hell,” Dax growls from behind me.

The fur on my spine shivers, my muscles contracting. I turn to him in time to watch him throw himself into his own transformation.

“Red, you have no idea what you do to me. No fucking clue.”

He grabs his cock, standing there through the shift until he has no choice but to drop onto all fours. His wolf is aroused as well and ready for action.

An equal desire burns through me. With the two of them here, we could?—

Mathis lifts his head to the sky and howls. The sound travels like the rippling energy from a bell. I feel it everywhere.

“You pig.” Torin’s voice drips with disdain. “Tuck your dick away. There are children out here.”

Dax glances left and right then licks his lips as he straightens, the wolf melting back into his humanity but barely. “I don’t see any kids around.”

Torin fixes Mathis in his sights, reproach emanating from him in waves. It doesn’t make me wanthimless, though.

It’s like whoever I am now, wolf or woman, I’m crazy for the four of them. Mathis, Dax, Torin,andNoble. Absolutely insane and hungry to taste them.

One at a time? All at once? It doesn’t matter. Not to me.

Torin strides through the trees, his blond hair contained at the nape of his neck. His goatee is neat, trimmed, every part of him dignified. He’d never strip in the woods this way.

He hardly looks real. “Control him. I shouldn’t have to ask you again,” he commands Mathis.

Mathis shrugs easily and refuses to step away from me. “Dax is right, though. I wouldn’t let him do those things if there were pups present.”

“That’s the hill you want to die on?” Torin is most certainly avoiding me, like there’s anything new about his actions.

My senses are wild, my hormones out of control. I liftmy muzzle to Torin and stare hard at him until he has no choice but to look at me, to feel and acknowledge whatever crackles to life between us.

The others might not see the minute differences on his face, but I do. There and gone in a blink. There's pride, a horrible vicious pride in his eyes as he takes in my wolf. And something I might have labeled as heartbreak if I didn’t know him as well as I do.

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