Page 28 of Fated to the Lone Shifter
The air between us feels charged. His eyes lock on mine and I can’t look away.
Noah doesn’t move. Doesn’t speak. Just stares at me like I’ve peeled off all my layers and laid myself bare in the dirt.
My pulse pounds in my throat.
“Why did you go alone?” he asks, voice roughened by anger—or fear. I can’t tell.
I open my mouth to answer, but his hands are already on me. Not harsh. Not demanding. Just checking—arms, shoulders, the side of my ribs where the wolf caught me.
His fingers graze a tender spot beneath my ribcage, and pain flares sharp and sudden—I can’t bite back the hiss that escapes me.
“You’re hurt,” he growls.
“It’s nothing,” I whisper.
But the tension snaps like a live wire. Because I’m lying. Not just about the injury, but everything.
And he knows it.
Still, instead of backing away, he moves closer. One hand cups my face, his thumb brushing over the apple of my cheek like he’s trying to memorize it. Like he’s not sure if I’m real.
“You shouldn’t have gone out there,” he murmurs. “You don’t know what hunts these woods.”
“I have some idea.”
I reach up, fingers stroking a deep, bloody claw mark across his chest. My body is still humming—shock, adrenaline, magic—but now something new creeps in: desire. Sharp and impossible to ignore.
Before I realize it, his breath is upon my throat, lips brushing over the pulse point, pounding beneath my skin. A little voice in my head questions whether he can restrain himself. Part of me hopes he can’t. My hands explore every part of him, palms skating over muscle and warmth and scars.
I want to memorize every inch of him.
He growls into my neck, the sound vibrating through my spine like a primal vow, sinking into the hollow between want and warning.
I can feel him losing control. His fangs surface.
“Tell me to stop,” he says.
But I don’t.
Because I don’t want him to.
Then he pushes me away, breaking the spell.
"Come on," he says. "Let’s get you cleaned up."
He leads me to his room in the dorms and gives me one of his shirts to wear. He takes my torn, bloodied clothes and disappears for awhile. I don’t ask where.
When he returns, I’m standing in the middle of the room, his shirt swallowing my frame.
I can sense blood from a fresh kill on his breath. A coyote perhaps. I can see that his wounds are nearly healed.
"Thank you," I say. "For everything."
He just nods.
But his eyes never leave mine.
And neither of us moves.
