Page 11 of The Forbidden Wolf

“You said you could explain!” Elyse shouted. “I thought you’d spoken with Father!”

“Father? No.” I shook my head and grimaced. “And I, uh, guess I was just half asleep when I said that. I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Kiana glared at me, disgust radiating across the mirror image of my own face. I shrank a little, pulling my sheets closer to my chin. I hoped my expressions had never made anyone feel as small and insignificant as hers made me feel. She threw herself across the foot of my bed so violently my butt went momentarily airborne.

“The Manhattan Alpha called Father this morning and said there was no point in waiting,” Kiana said in a flat tone. “The ceremony will take place tomorrow.”

“No!” I shouted, twisting my fingers in my sheets. “They can’t do that! I’m not ready—” I caught myself and looked down at my lap. “Not ready for you to go.”

“And here I thought you wouldn’t miss me at all.” Kiana’s head lolled toward me with a smirk. “It’s fine, Elyse. I’d be scared shitless too if I were you.”

“Why?” I demanded. “What have you heard?”

Kiana sat up and smoothed the long blonde ponytail she was currently sporting. “Don’t worry, Elyse. I’m not going anywhere. We can have the ceremony on their turf, but if he wants to put his paws on these puppies—” Kiana glanced downward and pushed her lips into a cynical simper. “—he’ll have to follow me home like a good dog.”

“And what if he doesn’t want to?” I teased in a dead serious tone. “What if the whole reason they’ve fast-tracked this thing is because Sebastian got caught trying to run away with his secret lover Iago, and none of your feminine wiles will be enough to coax him from the window of his penthouse where he waits each night for a glimpse of—”

“What is wrong with you?” Kiana screeched. “Why would you say that? How could you even think that? Seriously, how did your sick brain even come up with that? Iago? That’s really specific.” Kiana’s brow furrowed. “Do you know something?”

I offered her a syrupy sweet smile. “Tell me what you’ve heard about my prospects, and I’ll tell you what I know about Iago.”

Kiana laughed. “Bold of you to assume there’s more than one.”

“Of course there’s more than one,” I snapped. “I might not have your power, but I’ve got the exact same… assets.”

Kiana lifted her eyebrows skeptically at my covered chest and then frowned. “Why do you have blood on your fingers?”

“Huh?!” I yelped, dropping the sheet to study my hands as if I hadn’t noticed. “I guess I bite my nails in my—”

“What is that?” Kiana swiveled over onto her hands and knees, straddling my outstretched legs so I couldn’t get away. Her frosty blue eyes glowered at the spaceship emblazoned across my faded red shirt. “Elyse.”

“A random sleep shirt.” I folded my arms over the peeling image.

Kiana closed her eyes and blew a long stream of air through her flared nostrils. “Elyse. Are you doing the creepy coping thing again?”

I looked past her to the crooked portrait of our parents hanging on the living room wall. They were dancing, our beautiful mother, Dinah, in her simple, elegant mating ceremony gown frozen forever in a gentle backward dip, beaming up at our dashing father, Phelan, in his red velvet jacket.

The photo had been doctored so that their wolves’ faces filled the upper half of the frame, her white one tucked beneath the chin of his gray. It looked like a movie poster, which made sense because theirs had been the kind of love legends were made from—fated mates.

Seven years later—years our mother spent with her throat bared to the heavens, begging for Halo and Leto to bless her with a pup—I killed her. Just like that shark killed poor Mrs. Ferguson. Violently, painfully, and for no reason at all. Kiana was everything our mother needed. If she’d been able to stop after her…

Kiana snarled, fangs exploding from her protruding jaws. White fur swept across her shifting face all the way to the tips of her enormous pointy ears. My bed sagged under the weight of her wolf. I cringed away from her hot, moist breath until my back touched down on the mattress.

“Are you?” Her wolf voice growled inside my skull.

“No!” I turned my head, pressing my cheek to my pillow. “I promise, Kiana. I haven’t touched a book since—”

Her jaws snapped behind my skull, ripping the pillow out from under me. She threw it across the room in a cascade of downy feathers.

“You know the only reason I would even consider moving to Manhattan is to keep Sebastian away from you. If he finds out my own little sister won’t even submit to my rule…”

“Then send me to Manhattan!” The words tumbled out, surprising us both.

Kiana’s azure eyes narrowed above her wrinkled muzzle. Saliva dripped on my cheek, but I fought the urge to wipe it on my shoulder. I also fought the frightened urge to expose my neck to her. I still trusted my human sister to some extent, but I would never trust her wolf again. Not after what she did on my sixteenth birthday.

“Do it,” I whispered, keeping my gaze trained on the blood red numbers of my digital clock. “Let some Manhattan male claim me, and let us be done with each other.”

Kiana laughed. The human sound echoed in my head while her wolf self fell back on her haunches, panting hysterically. I grit my teeth against the pain of her bulk on my human knees. She turned my face upward with one dish-sized paw and then roughly patted my cheek, pricking my skin with her sharp claws.

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