Page 35 of Under the Moonlight

“Why did you do that?” he asked.

“Because it’s the truth.”

Xander pulled away, cupping her chin in his hand. “You didn’t think I would come for you?”

“Not for me, but you would come for your revenge.”

He shook his head. “God, Greer, I stopped caring about revenge the minute I knew you’d been taken. I was so wrong, putting my agenda before everything else and I almost lost the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”

“You’re just saying that now because I’m going to be a werewolf,” she snapped.

He looked so incredulous, she’d have laughed if she wasn’t so miserable.

“You can’t actually believe that.”

“Why not?” She knew she was lashing out, but raw anger ate at her and she had no where to unleash it except the man in front of her. “You were the one who said yourself that I would never understand you because I wasn’t a shifter.”

“You are taking that completely out of context.”

Greer pulled out of his arms, wincing at the ache in her shoulder. “I can’t do this right now. I want to go home.”

“I’ll take you—

“No.” She climbed to her feet, aware that an audience of shifters was watching their exchange, but she didn’t give a rip. Not right now. It was all too much. Her life, her choice had been torn away from her and she couldn’t handle anyone else’s emotions, not even Xander’s. “Jill can take me. Clyde can take me. Anyone can take me but you. I need some time.”

“How much time?”

She turned and headed for the door. “I don’t know.”

23

It had been two weeks, one day, and seventeen hours since Greer had been bitten, and so far, not much had changed. Oh, she could shift her body now into the form of a cream-colored wolf with deep brown eyes, but other than that, life was the same as it had always been. She took in clients, she made pretty designs, she got paid, and she stayed in watching Swayze and eating ice cream.

She was on a Kevin Bacon hiatus until further notice.

Of course, the police had discovered that the recent murders had been carried out by a shifter who, thanks to an anonymous tip, was found in an isolated cabin with several gunshot wounds to the chest. They hadn’t discovered who killed him, but they did come upon his last victim down by the river. Case closed.

Clad in only her robe, Greer walked out into her back yard, lifting her open mouth up to catch snowflakes on her tongue. The fall festival had come and gone and now, all anyone could talk about was Thanksgiving and Christmas. The amazing thing about being a shifter was her body ran so hot, the cold hardly effected her.

She heard a twig snap and her gaze immediately zeroed in on a flash of gray and white fur. Damn, Xander. She hadn’t been ready to talk when he’d come by the day after her first shift and she still didn’t. Yet he just couldn’t take the hint.

Neither could the pinch of her heart that missed him terribly.

“I thought I told you to give me space?”

He came out of the woods, trotting toward her. He sat on the edge of the yard, a good fifteen feet from her as if to say, “See? Space.”

“What do you want, Xander? Shouldn’t you have moved on by now? Mission completed, right?”

He just sat there panting, and fury assailed her, making her skin hum with electricity. Her nails lengthened, telling her she was about to lose control and so she did.

Stripping off the robe and kicking her slippers to the side, she shifted. It took all of twenty seconds for her bones to contort and fur to line her bare skin, but when it was over, she shook her head.

Her gaze met his and she leapt off the porch with a snarl as she ran past him into the woods. She could hear his big paws eating up the ground behind her and she pushed harder, faster. She wasn’t really running from him; she wasn’t sure what she was running from.

She was just so mad. She was furious with herself for getting involved with him, and being hurt by him. Of getting bit and having that choice taken from her. When and if she’d ever imagined becoming a shifter, it would have been during a scenting ceremony, like the one Clyde’s wife and daughters had told her about when they’d come to stay with her after Dakota’s attack. Xander would have apologized again about the fight they’d had, and she would have forgiven him. Given time, admitted that she was in love with him and that the sight of Dakota attacking him had sent her into such a rage she was willing to give up her life for his.

Then once they had both admitted how much they needed each other, she would have chosen to let Xander bite her, binding them together forever.

---