Page 57 of Moonlit Nights & Northern Lights
Silk spun from starlight, warm as breath.
I stood there, my hands still tingling from the warmth of his fur, watching as Rory bounded around me. There was something different about the telepathic connection with a shifted wolf. Kit had explained it to me once. In wolf form, shifters followed base senses and didn’t necessarily stick to human-like thoughts. Hearing wolves wasn’t the structured sentences or clear images I sometimes caught from humans, but rather impressions, emotions, instincts.
From Rory, I felt waves of something like pure contentment radiating outward. Not thoughts exactly, but a buzzing energy—relaxed happiness streaming from him in pulses. It was strangely infectious. I found myself smiling as he continued circling me, occasionally pressing against my legs or looking up with those bright eyes.
After a few minutes of this, I realised he was still lingering around me rather than taking advantage of the freedom the forest offered.
“You should go run,” I told him, gesturing toward the trees. “That was the point of coming out here, so…”
His ears immediately flattened against his skull, and I felt a ripple of something like disappointment. It was almost funny, that Rory’s wolfcounterpart actually seemed tolikeme. Rory would surely be fuming about it when he changed back.
“Go on. I’ll wait here for you.”
Rory hesitated, then nudged my hand one last time. With a final glance over his shoulder, he took off into the night, a golden streak disappearing between the trees.
And just like that, I was alone.
The silence felt sudden and absolute. The forest sounds rushed in to fill the void—rustling leaves composing whispered verses, distant owls punctuating the night with mournful refrains, the occasional crack of a branch—but they only carved Rory’s absence deeper. It was strange how quickly I’d grown accustomed to his constant presence, his chatter. Now the quiet felt oddly hollow, a poem missing its most vital line.
I leaned against a tree and looked up at the fragments of night sky visible through the canopy. How odd to miss the company of someone who, just days ago, I would have paid good money to avoid.
I’d been standing there for about twenty minutes, alone with my thoughts, when a twig snapped nearby. My head jerked up, scanning the darkness. A flash of golden fur appeared between the trees, and relief washed over me. He was back.
Rory trotted into the clearing, and I opened my mouth to greet him. Then I noticed what was dangling from his jaws.
A rabbit. A very dead rabbit.
And not just that—Rory was absolutely covered in blood. It matted the fur around his muzzle, stained his chest, and had somehow even splattered across his back. He looked like he’d just walked off the set of a horror film.
Before I could process this grisly sight, Rory padded directly to me and dropped the mangled corpse at my feet with what could only be described as a proud flourish. He sat back on his haunches, tail sweeping enthusiastically across the forest floor, looking up at me with bright, expectant eyes.
Istumbled backward, nearly tripping over a root. “Jesus Christ! Get that thing away from me!”
Rory didn’t move. The rabbit remained where it was, a bloody offering on the forest floor, while Rory’s tail continued its happy rhythm.
“I’m serious! What the hell am I supposed to do with that?” I gestured wildly at the dead animal. “Take it to a taxidermist? Mount it on my wall?”
As I glared at him, I felt something that could only be described as laughter—a bubbling, effervescent amusement that radiated from him in waves. He was enjoying this. The little shit was enjoying my discomfort.
And here I’d been, minutes earlier, actually missing his company. Thinking profound thoughts about his absence. What had I been thinking? This was Rory Thorne—the same irritating man who’d been driving me mad for years, just in a different form. One that apparently thought bringing me bloody carcasses was appropriate.
Rory nudged the rabbit closer to my feet with his nose, his mental laughter growing stronger.
“No,” I said firmly, backing up another step. “Absolutely not. And this is the last time I ever come with you to shift.”
But even as I said it, I knew it was a lie. Because despite the blood, despite the dead rabbit, despite everything—there was something captivating about him like this. Wild and free and utterly himself. No pretense, no walls, just pure Rory.
He bounded around me in circles, still radiating that mental laughter, and I found myself fighting a smile. It was hard to stay properly annoyed when faced with such obvious joy. Even if that joy came at my expense.
“Fine,” I sighed, running a hand through my hair. “You’ve had your fun. Can we go back now? Before you decide to bring me an entire deer?”
Rory made a sound that was somewhere between a snort and a huff. As I watched him, resplendent in the moonlight, I couldn’t help but wonder what it would be like sleeping beside him tonight. To lie next to the man who, just moments ago, had been this wild, magnificentcreature. The man whose fur had been impossibly soft beneath my fingers. The man who’d looked at me with those bright, knowing eyes.
Imagining his human form lying next to me in the dark later, blond hair splayed out across the pillow as he inevitably hogged the blankets, something shifted inside me—a tectonic plate moving just enough to change the landscape. This wasn’t just professional curiosity or reluctant tolerance. This was…attraction. To another man. To Rory Thorne, of all people.
The realisation stole my breath away, sent my head spinning. Somehow, Iwasattracted to Rory—to his wild spirit, to his annoying laugh, to the way he moved with such freedom whether on two legs or four.
And now I was about to share a bed with him, not to mention pretend to be in love with him in front of dozens of strangers, once we arrived in Scotland.
