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  Slowly, my body shifted along with his. It hurt like a fucking son of a bitch as my bones broke and reshaped themselves, and when I was completely human again, I fell to my knees, losing Noah’s gaze as I gasped for breath. I finally started to understand why shifters didn’t care about shifting back naked, because at that moment, my nudity was the last thing on my mind.

  All I could think about was how much it hurt.

  And how badly I had fucked up.

  Noah crouched beside me, helping me to my feet as Jackson yanked the large comforter off the bed. They wrapped it around my body, ignoring their own nudity as they took care of me.

  “What the fuck?” Carl had regained his voice, and it seemed like he’d keep asking that question until someone gave him an answer.

  I had no words, though. What could I say to make him understand? To pick up the pieces of his mind and put them back together? To re-create the world he thought he knew?

  So I turned toward Molly instead, guilt squeezing my heart like a vise. I’d almost attacked her. Because of an innocent tune she’d hummed—I’d almost let my wolf rip her throat out.

  A memory of what that felt like, what it sounded and tasted like to kill someone that way, assaulted me, and I felt Noah and Jackson tighten their grips as my knees wobbled.

  Molly stared at me with huge eyes, her face set in a mask of shock.

  “I’m…” I swallowed. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to—”

  I took a small step toward her, but before I could say anything else, Carl crossed the room in a few long strides, coming to stand protectively in front of his girlfriend. “Hey! Don’t fucking touch her.”

  Tears stung my eyes. “I was just—”

  His eyes narrowed dangerously. “Listen, sweetheart. I don’t know what the fuck you are or what you’re playing at. But you better get the hell out of this house right now.”

  “All right, man. All right.” Jackson held out a hand placatingly, although the tension simmering in the air told me this situation was anything but all right.

  Carl ran a hand over his slicked-back hair, facing us all down with a glare. Rhys and West grabbed my arms to support me while Jackson and Noah quickly grabbed new clothes. They pulled me out into the hallway, tugging on pants, shirts, and boots as we walked. When we reached the front door, West and Rhys pulled the comforter away from me and helped me slip into my own clothes. My hands shook so badly I could barely get them through the arm holes of my shirt.

  I should’ve been happy I didn’t have to navigate around a cast to get dressed anymore, but any happiness I’d felt about getting the cast removed had been entirely overshadowed by the events that’d followed.

  Rhys tugged the hem of my shirt down, resting his hands on my hips to steady me. No one had spoken since we left the bedroom. I could hear the soft sounds of Molly and Carl’s voices from inside the room, but I couldn’t guess what they were saying.

  “We gotta get out of here. At least long enough for him to cool off. If Scrubs shifts again, I don’t know what he’ll do.”

  “I won’t—” I started, but broke off quickly. That wasn’t a promise I could keep, and we all knew it. I hadn’t meant to shift the last time, but it had happened anyway. And I could still feel my wolf pacing inside me, restless and anxious.

  Jackson pushed the door open, and we stepped out into the midday sunlight. The air outside was hot and dry, and the sun felt good on my face; I’d gotten more used to the outdoors than I’d realized, and being trapped inside felt stifling now. Molly’s house was in a quiet, unassuming neighborhood. The houses were small and old, but well-cared for. Palm trees and rock gardens graced the front yards.

  Two strong hands grabbed mine, and I held onto them for dear life as Rhys and Noah supported me between them. We walked quickly down the street, leaving Molly’s house behind.

  “Well, fuck.” Jackson’s voice came from just behind me. His tone was light, but I could hear the weight of worry underneath it.

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered. My gaze flicked up to Rhys. “The first time we went to see Carl, you told me he didn’t know. You said not to blow your cover. I didn’t mean to. I’m so sorry.”

  “Don’t worry about it, Lexi. It’s not your fault.” His jaw muscles twitched. “But I honestly don’t know if we can go back there. I don’t know what he’s going to do.”

  “Carl wouldn’t sell us out,” Noah said, looking over my head at Rhys. “He lives by a code, and you know he actually means that shit.”

  “Yeah. But his code applies to humans. What if he decides animals aren’t worth the same respect?”

  The bitterness in Rhys’s voice twisted a knife in my heart. That was how Carl and Molly would probably see us. And try as I might to perceive things differently, it was hard not to see myself that way right now too.

  West cleared his throat. “Well, we’ll give him a while to calm down. But we have to go back and deal with it at some point. At the very least, we need to get our shit before we leave.”

  “What happened, Scrubs?” Noah squeezed my arm a little tighter, his soft blue eyes looking down at me.

  “I… I don’t know, exactly. We were talking. She took off my cast. Then she started humming a lullaby—a song that brought back old, awful memories. It freaked me out. I couldn’t stop thinking about those people I killed, my mom trying to kill me. And my wolf reacted to my fear; I think she forced her way out to try to protect me.”

  “She’s fucking huge. And beautiful.” Awe sounded in Jackson’s voice.

  “She is?”

  “Holy fuck, yeah. I’ve never seen another shifter like you.”

  My heart warmed at the tone of his voice, at the same time an icy chill washed down my spine. I hadn’t been wrong. It hadn’t just been my imagination. My wolf was different. And she was out of control.

  We reached a small neighborhood park with a playground and some benches set up on a stretch of grass. Noah and Rhys steered me over to one, and I gratefully sank down onto the wooden bench. My legs were still shaky, and my body ached.

  The others all gathered around. Jackson hopped up to sit on the back of the bench with his feet on the seat, sliding his fingers through my hair and massaging my neck.

  “I don’t understand,” I said, forcing my eyes to stay focused. I wanted to retreat inside myself, where only the feeling of Jackson’s strong fingers working out the knots in my muscles existed. But I couldn’t. “What did Strand do to me to make me different? What does it mean?”

  “We don’t know, Scrubs,” Noah said. “All we have are guesses. They were sneaky about dosing you too, pretending it was all to treat some mystery illness. In our case, they didn’t bother hiding it at all. We got daily injections for a while, then less frequently, until our wolves finally came out.”

  “What did they inject you with? What does it do?” What else is going to happen to me?

  “Not sure. Some of it was to force the change, to alter our DNA. And some of it was to keep the change from killing us… although it didn’t work on all their subjects. I heard them refer to something called ‘the source’ a few times, but fuck if I know what that means.”

  “We can’t say exactly what they did to you, because they were constantly experimenting. In our complex, they had different batches of test subjects,” West said softly. “Some couldn’t fully complete the shift. It was… ugly. None of them survived.”

  “No shifters have ever been able to get pregnant. And believe me, Strand tried.” Rhys’s voice held a hard edge, and West’s nostrils flared. “Some people made the shift once and never shifted back. They kept those ones in a pen together, just in case it ever happened.”

  Noah must’ve seen the rising panic in my eyes, because he gestured to the others to stop. His hand fell on my knee, squeezing gently. “But you have shifted back, Scrubs. Twice. Your wolf is strong, and you’ll have to figure out how to deal with that. But you’re strong too. I know you can handle it.”

  I blinked hard, fighting back the tears that wanted to fall. His faith in me caused an ache in my heart, partly because I couldn’t find any of that same faith in myself.

  “When I shifted back there, I—I didn’t even know Carl and Molly’s names,” I forced out. “I saw everything through my wolf’s eyes, and they were just a man and a woman. And they were threats. What if you guys hadn’t come in when you did? I could’ve killed Molly!”

  No one contradicted me, and even though my heart sank, I appreciated that they weren’t lying to me, coddling me to make me feel better. I wasn’t wrong, and we all knew it. If things had gone differently, Molly’s guest room could’ve ended up painted in blood just like the inside of that ambulance.

  The thought made tears spill down my cheeks, and I swiped the back of my hand across my eyes, despising my weakness.

  “What if I had attacked one of you?” I whispered, my heart cracking open at the words.

  “Did you want to?” Noah dipped his head to catch my gaze, his earnest gray-blue eyes searching for something in my expression.

  I remembered staring into those eyes as we shifted together from wolf to human. Remembered the relief I’d felt at having all of my mates there with me.

  “No,” I admitted. “I didn’t. She knew who you were. She recognized you. She lov—”

  I broke off abruptly, not ready to say the word. My feelings were real, whether spoken or unspoken, but I didn’t want to tell these men how much I cared about them while sitting on a park bench after almost murdering two humans. An admission like that deserved a better moment than this.

  The guys let it slide, although I saw warmth flash in Noah’s eyes.

  “See?” His thumb made gentle circles on my thigh. “She can control her hunter’s instinct. And she won’t hurt people she cares about. You just need to teach her to care about all the people you do.”

  I snorted. “It’s a short list. It should be pretty easy for her to learn.”

  A grin tilted one corner of his lips. “I’m serious, though. You need to make peace with your wolf, let her be part of your life, or she’ll always be ‘other.’ Wild.”

  I nodded slowly, biting my bottom lip as I tried to pull myself back together. “I can try.”

  The truth was, that was exactly how she felt.

  Other.

  Wild.

  She felt like an uncontrollable, monstrous part of me that brought only death and violence every time she surfaced.

  How was I supposed to make peace with that?

  Chapter Eleven

  “We better go back. I don’t want to push our luck with Carl, but I don’t want to give him too much time to stew either.”

  At West’s words, I lifted my head from the firm pillow of Rhys’s stomach. Jackson peeked up at me from where his head rested on my stomach. Noah was sprawled on the ground next to us, his fingers tangled in mine. After the guys had calmed me down a little, we’d gravitated toward the comforting patch of shade underneath the largest tree in the park.

  The adrenaline of shifting and the fear of what I’d almost done had left me exhausted. When Jackson plunked down in the grass by the tree, I’d happily followed suit, and before I knew it, we were all lying together in a pile of warm bodies and hard muscles. It felt nice, and for the past hour, I’d been able to shut off the worries assaulting my brain.

  But at the prospect of having to face Carl and Molly again, they returned with a vengeance.

  “Are you sure?” I choked out.

  “Yeah.” West pursed his lips. He leaned against the base of the tree nearby, and it didn’t escape my notice that he’d deliberately kept distance between us. “If we don’t get back there and talk to him, I’m afraid he’ll give up our location. I hope we can trust him more than that, but I don’t want to give him the chance to rat us out.”

  Fuck. He had been furious. If Carl was pissed or scared enough, would he call the cops on us? Or someone worse?

  Jackson picked up on the worry in my eyes as he stood and tugged me to my feet after him. He pressed a kiss to my hair, wrapping his strong arms around me. “Don’t worry, Alexis. We’ve known Carl for years. I’m sure he never fucking thought he’d see us turn into wolves, but he trusts us. We’ll talk to him.”

  I couldn’t imagine what they could say that would make any of this acceptable, but I forced my feet to move as we all headed back toward the house at a fast walk. West was right, we needed to get back there. Beyond the concerns about Carl betraying us, the simple truth was, we owed him an explanation—and Molly too. They’d opened up their lives to us, giving us shelter and aid with no questions asked.

  And if they had some questions now… well, I really couldn’t blame them.

  When we reached the small, single-story house that had been our home base for the past six weeks, nerves prickled up my spine. Carl stood outside, and he looked up as we approached. I couldn’t read his expression from a distance, but I saw his posture change as soon as he caught sight of us. He stiffened, standing up straighter and somehow seeming to inflate his muscles like a puffer fish. How the hell did guys do that?

  The four shifters at my side noticed too, and our pace slowed a little. Noah and Rhys closed ranks around me, while Jackson and West fell into step in front of us. As if they were creating a human shield to protect me.

  My heart warmed at the realization at the same time my stomach pitched. If one of these men got hurt trying to defend me, I’d never forgive myself. Rhys had already taken a punch standing up for me in that bar, and I wasn’t sure I could bear to watch something like that happen again.

  “Wondered if you’d come back.” Carl crossed his arms over his chest, eyeing us assessingly as we came to stand in front of him.

  “Wondered if you’d let us,” West shot back, his tone carefully neutral.

  “You can get your things. Then go.” The sharp-faced man jerked his chin toward me. “Your woman is fine. Well, she’s healed up, anyway. We did what we could for her, but I can’t be gettin’ into whatever shit you’ve got going on.” He shook his head, a worried expression pinching his face. “I’ve got my own problems to deal with.”

  My shoulders drooped with disappointment. He was kicking us out? I shouldn’t be surprised, but given the guys’ history with him, and how much he’d helped us already, part of me had held out hope for a better response. He’d seemed almost like a father figure to “the four horsemen,” as he called them, despite the fact that he was only ten years older, max.

  I could hear the same disappointment in West’s voice when he replied.

  “Sure. We understand.” He hesitated. “And then what? Are you gonna send the cops after us?”

  “Don’t you mean animal control?” Carl’s nostrils flared, and his temper seemed to be working its way back up. His gaze flicked to me again, and I was certain he was remembering the way I’d prowled toward Molly as a wolf, destruction in my gaze.

  Rhys made a noise low in his throat, moving closer to me, but Jackson broke away from our group.

  “I’ll get our stuff. I’ll be quick.”

  He slipped inside the house, and the four of us stood facing Carl in a tense, awkward standoff.

  When Jackson opened the front door again two minutes later, I was impressed with how fast he’d managed to gather our things—until I realized he didn’t have any of it.

  The reason for that became obvious immediately as Molly flew out the door after him, prodding him in the back to make him go faster. She darted forward to stand between Carl and us, her blue-green eyes flashing.

  “You’re kicking them out?”

  Carl smoothed his hair back, shaking his head. “No, baby. They’re just leaving.”

  “Like hell they are!”

  I blinked. She doesn’t want us to go?

  Carl looked like he wanted to shake some sense into Molly, but instead, he settled for glaring around her at me. “She tried to fucking kill you, Mols! I’m not letting them stay here.”

  She reached out, resting her hands on his chest and stepping closer to him. “Am I dead, Carl?”

  He shook his head sullenly. “No.”

  “Am I hurt?”

  “That’s not the fucking—”

  “Am I?”

  I could practically hear his teeth grinding together as he answered.

  “No.”

  “Then they’re not leaving.”

  “Baby—”

  He opened his mouth to argue again, but Molly pressed a kiss to his lips before he could say anything. Then she turned to face us, wrapping his arms around her body as she did.

  “What the hell are you?” Her voice was soft, and her eyes held fear but also a burning curiosity.

  “We can tell you everything,” West said. “But it’s probably better we don’t have this conversation outside.”

  Carl heaved a breath and rolled his eyes, though his muscles remained taut. “Fucking fuck. Well, lucky for you, my girlfriend is a motherfucking saint—who also happens to be mildly obsessed with unexplained phenomena and the supernatural.”

  Without explaining any further, he turned on his heel and walked up the steps to the house, tugging Molly along with him. The rest of us shared a glance then followed.

  As soon as Noah closed the door behind us, Carl spoke, crossing his arms over his chest.

  “Okay. Spill it. And it better be fucking good, considering you’ve lied to me the entire time I’ve known you.”

  I wondered if that fact upset him as much as the fact that his longtime friends were part wolf. Although most of his business was on the wrong side of the law, he seemed to live by a very strict personal moral code. And that code probably didn’t include lying to people you cared about.

  “What you saw Alexis, Noah, and Jackson do? We can all do that.” Rhys tugged his curly black hair into a bunch at the back of his neck before releasing the strands again. “We were test subjects of the Strand Corporation, and they’ve been creating shifters—part wolf, part human—for years.”

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