Page 9 of Stalked By the Wolf

Claire shouldn’t get too close. She’ll only be disappointed when she realizes the type of male I am.

“Will he even know how to shift? I mean, does another bear need to show him how?”

I shake my head. “The urge to shift is instinctual — undeniable, actually. He or she won’t have any trouble. A lot of shifters who are orphaned or abandoned by their birth parents don’t know what’s happening the first couple of times.”

“That’s horrible,” she murmurs.

I nod, and a cold fist clenches around my heart. “I thought I was dying the first time I shifted.” I flash a smirk, but it feels hollow. “I was in primary school . . . asked to go to the toilet. The first Change is always . . . sloppy. And it hurts like hell. I think I shifted halfway, passed out from the pain, and changed back. I woke up on the bathroom floor in a pool of my own piss.”

I glance at Claire, whose face is a mask of devastation. “How old were you?”

“Eight.”

She swallows. “And you didn’t . . .”

“I never knew my dad,” I say quickly. “And my mum was . . . Well, let’s just say she didn’t really know him either.”

Claire sucks in a breath and lets it out in a rush. “I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

“Sorry you had to go through that.”

I shake my head. “You don’t need to feel sorry for me.”

But Claire reaches back across the center console and takes my hand in hers. Her hand is tiny — almost childlike — and her skin is the softest I’ve ever felt.

It’s weird — Ishouldhate this. It’s why I never tell people about my childhood. It’s bloody depressing, for one thing. And I fucking hate to be pitied.

But with Claire, I find I don’t mind being comforted. My wolf craves her closeness — like it’s something he’s been missing for a long, long time.

When I snap back to reality, I realize I’ve almost reached the exit for Gold Creek. I turn off the motorway and cut through town, taking the snow-packed dirt road up the side of the mountain.

Claire sits up in her seat and looks out the window, admiring the view of the town sprawled out below, its golden lights twinkling in the dark.

Soon the road gets rougher with jagged washboards, but I navigate the icy switchbacks with ease. My G-wagon is the 4x4 squared — one of only three hundred units produced in America.

As we pull into the garage I had built into the mountain below my house, I get a nervous flutter in my chest. I’m not sure why, but I find myself worrying what Claire will think of my place.

“Where are we?” Claire asks nervously, stiffening as the automatic door blots out the star-flecked sky, throwing us into darkness.

“Home sweet home.”

CHAPTER FIVE

CLAIRE

For the first time tonight,I realize how stupid I’ve been.

I got in the car with a total stranger without telling anyone where I was going. A very good-looking stranger, but still. This guy could be a serial killer for all I know. We’re parked in some kind of underground garage that looks as though it was built into the mountain itself.

Sebastian gets out, and I hastily unbuckle. Shadow emits a low growl as the wolf shifter takes his carrier out, looking none too pleased.

“I don’t think your cat likes me,” my rescuer observes as he carries Shadow toward a steel-plated door equipped with a keypad. My eyes dart around the garage, which is sparsely furnished with a few shelves and surveillance cameras in every corner.

Sebastian punches in a code, and I hear the heavy clunk of the deadbolt being drawn back into the lock.

“It’s not you,” I say, rubbing my arms nervously. “Shadow has some . . . trauma. His previous owner kept pit bulls for dog fights, and he trained them to be really aggressive. Half of Shadow’s left ear had been ripped off when he was dumped at the animal shelter. His wounds were so bad that the vet there didn’t think he’d make it. But Shadow is a fighter . . . He just doesn’t like dogs.”

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