I’d be no good to anyone if I was a wolf.

I cursed the confetti of my genetic makeup for being too messed up and difficult. At the same time I had to be grateful, though. If I’d been all vampire, they wouldn’t have spoken to me. All werewolf and I’d have been made someone’s pet. I’d gotten this far because no one knew what to make of me.

But Desmond was suffering, and I couldn’t be selfish enough to ask him to keep suffering if I was the only reason for it.

“You should shift.”

“No.”

“I’m with Secret,” Holden said. “You should shift.”

Desmond growled at the vampire, letting his feelings on the interruption be known. I ignored Holden the best I could and went on. “Listen to me, okay?”

It took him a minute to shift his gaze from Holden back to me. “I’m listening.”

“You’re in pain.”

“I’ve been in pain before.”

“Because of me.”

“Secret, this isn’t…” He winced, holding his ribs like they were being broken from the inside. A whine escaped him he couldn’t hold back, and my guilt overwhelmed me.

“This is my fault.” I countered the argument he hadn’t been able to finish. “If you weren’t with me, you’d be safe at home. If you weren’t with me, you’d be willing to shift. If you weren’t—”

“But I am with you. And that changes everything.”

“You’re an idiot,” Holden muttered, drawing Desmond’s attention back to him.

“Don’t pretend like you wouldn’t do the same thing. You can act as cold as you want, pretend because your heart doesn’t beat you don’t feel anything, but I’m not blind. None of us are fucking blind. You’re as goddamned in love with her as I am, and acting like a jackass to me doesn’t change that. If you were in my position, you’d do the same thing.”

Holden opened his mouth to protest, but Desmond gave a violent head shake. “No. I’m not in the fucking mood to act coy about this. She shows up smelling like you sometimes. I’m not stupid. You’re not stupid. I see how you look at her, and it’s the same fucking way I look at her. I know a hopeless man when I see one.”

This time Holden didn’t try to argue.

I sank all the way onto the floor and looked between them, struck mute both out of shock and my brain’s complete inability to form coherent thoughts that might become sensible words.

“You’re right,” Holden said after the silence had become thick enough to chew on.

My pulse tripped. Had Holden just admitted to loving me? And more importantly, had he admitted it to Desmond instead of me?

“You’re right,” he repeated. “I would fight to stay in control if it was me in your place. But I’m not in your position. I’m here, standing, functional. I actually can help her. All you’re doing is making her worry, making her feel guilty, and making things that much worse.”

“Could we maybe stop talking about her like she’s not here?” I asked.

No such luck.

“She needs me,” Desmond replied.

“No. Right now she needs me. And she doesn’t need to be fretting about the length of the hair on your arms. So do us all a favor and shift already before I find a way to force that bloody beast out of you.”

Desmond’s breaths came short and furious from his nostrils, and for a second I was dead certain he was going to leap across the room and try to tear Holden to pieces with his bare hands. I, for one, was still reeling from the almost-love confession Holden had given seconds before. It’s not often a girl hears a vampire admit to loving her right before threatening violence against her werewolf soul mate.

For me, though, I probably should have seen something like this coming.

Finally Desmond looked back at me, and the pain in his eyes made my heart stop.

“What do you want me to do?” he asked.

Here he was, putting the decision in my hands. What must it feel like to trust someone that much? To willingly lay your life at their feet and say, What you do with it is up to you? I wasn’t sure if that level of selflessness would ever come naturally to me. It was brave of him to ask, and terrifying for me to hear.

“I can’t decide that—”

“Secret, you don’t get to take the easy way out on this one,” he said. “If you say change, I’ll change. If you say don’t, I won’t. But I came here for you, so this decision is yours. What do you want me to do?”

I stared at Holden, but he wouldn’t meet my gaze. This was all on me.

Turning back to Desmond, I clutched his cold, sweaty palm in my own and squeezed. The pressure was too hard to provide comfort to him, but was meant more for me to hold him, anyway. To hang on to the realness and the humanity of him for a moment before I asked him to do the one thing I knew he didn’t want to do.

He’d have fought it until the end if I didn’t say the words.

“I want you to shift.”

Chapter Twenty-Eight

They kicked me out.

The one thing they could agree on—aside from their mutual white-knight complexes—was that it wasn’t a good idea for me to be in the room when Desmond shifted. I wanted to argue, but the logic behind it was compelling. I might not be able to resist my own change if my wolf saw Desmond make his, and it wasn’t worth the risk to test my control. I might have tried it at home, but I couldn’t take the chance here.

I was ushered into a bedroom connected to the foyer, and they closed the doors on me. Dumping my sword next to a small table, I took off my gun holster and began to pace the floor. It wasn’t as bad as being locked up in a turret, but I certainly felt like a pathetic damsel in distress while I walked uselessly, waiting for it to happen.

A shiver of energy washed over me, and my wolf perked up, as if being woken from a light sleep. She didn’t fight me, or try to get out, but we both knew the moment Desmond had shifted because something inside me felt it. The same tether that drew me to him and Lucas like an invisible leash gave a tug now to let me know something had happened at the other end.

From the foyer came a loud, low growl so unpleasant the door rattled slightly. Then there was a bark and a scuffling sound. I moved towards the door but froze in place when I heard a man curse and a lupine yelp. This time I didn’t hesitate, but grabbed the door handle and had begun to jerk it open when Holden crashed into the room and slammed it behind him.

Blood had soaked through the sleeve of his shirt, and his hair was disheveled.

“Jesus Christ, Holden! What happened out there?” I tried to push by him to get at the door, wondering if this was a case of if you think I look bad, you should see the other guy, but Holden blocked me from getting there.

“I can’t let you go out there.”

I stared at him, taking in the paler-than-usual coloring of his complexion, and in my coldest, most serious voice, asked, “What did you do to him?”

At first he didn’t seem to understand the question. Then, when it dawned on him what the implications of my thinking were, his befuddlement faded into a frown. He raised his bloody arm and held it in front of my face. “What did I do to him?” he mocked. “You have got to be kidding me.”

I tried to bypass him again, but he wasn’t in the mood for games anymore. He pushed me away and cracked the door a fraction of an inch. “Why don’t you have a look? See what I did to your precious mutt.”

Ducking under his arm, I angled myself so I could see through the small opening he’d created. The foyer was dark, and nothing appeared to be moving, but as I leaned closer a flash of white teeth came at me. I fell back as Desmond hurled himself at the open space, snapping and growling, spit flying from his mouth. The area around his muzzle was damp with drool and blood.

Holden forced the door closed once again and stared down to where I’d fallen on my ass. My heart was hammering so loudly Desmond could probably hear it on the other side of the door.

To add insult to injury, that was twice in less than an hour I’d been knocked flat on my rump by something taking me by surprise. Either I was losing my edge, or things here were way more fucked up than they tended to be in the real world. I was hoping for option B, because I was too young to lose my edge.

“I don’t understand,” I said. “I’ve never seen him act that way.”

Thinking back to my first encounter with Desmond in his wolf form, I’d ended up in a pretty similar position—knocked on the floor in surprise. But in that case it had been the shock of seeing a giant fucking wolf sitting outside my front door. His actual behavior at the time had been gentle, slow and nonthreatening. Even as a wolf he’d made it clear to me who he was and that he meant me no harm.

Now he was throwing his whole weight against the door—making me hope the fae were adept carpenters—and there was nothing gentle about him at all. I’d never imagined this violent, hateful version of Desmond. I’d seen the man punch a hole right through drywall in a fit of rage, but he hadn’t made me fear for my own safety.

The entire time I’d known Desmond I would have sworn on my life and everything I held important in the world he would never hurt me. Not in a million years would he lay a hand on me or put my well-being at risk.

But two seconds ago he’d jumped at me like my blood was the only thing he wanted.

And it was one of the scariest fucking things I’d experienced in recent memory.

“It’s not him,” Holden said.

“It is him. It’s not like you can pretend another wolf came in after I stepped out and traded places with him. That’s Desmond.” My voice was shaking, making me sound too much like a trembling little girl for my tastes.

Holden offered me a hand up and I took it, trying to keep some of my dignity intact as I climbed to my feet. My hand didn’t tremble at all when I took his, point for me.

“That’s not what I meant. It is Desmond, physically. But he’s not in control of himself.”