My inner wolf went wild. An insatiable urge overcame him. He wanted her. Wanted herbadly. Images flashed through my mind, fed by the wolf within.Cameron, sweaty and moaning, riding me. Cameron, screaming my name as she pressed her face into the sheets. Cameron, her moans muffled by my stiff cock in her mouth.
I shook my head to clear the images and sent a warning thought to the wolf. I wanted her, too, but that wasn’t going to happen. We both needed to get over it.
I wasn’t used to the wolf side and human side being out of step. This was a new situation, and I wasn’t sure how to get it under control. At that moment, with Cameron still pressed against me, I realized I hadn’t had an inkling of desire foranywoman since meeting her.
Strange for me, and most likely a very bad sign.
Before I could stop it, the wolf managed to wrest control of my right hand, moving it in a slow sweep across Cameron’s back, from shoulder blade to lower back to?—
She stepped away from me, blushing furiously.
“This isn’t a good idea, Nate,” she said breathlessly, but I could see deep down she’d wanted my hand to go further.
Of course it wasn’t a good idea. She had a boyfriend. My wolf roared in my head, and my fists clenched as I imaginedhimwith her, her naked body entwined with his. Nausea roiled in my stomach.
I shrugged, doing my best to remain calm and exude the same cocky confidence I always did. “Were you having inappropriate thoughts about me, Cameron?” I asked, putting a hand to my chest in mock shock. “What a dirty girl.”
The joke broke the tension, and she rolled her eyes. Inside, the wolf and I both fell into despair and confusion. I had no idea what was happening to me, but I needed to be the bigger man. Needed to be decent, and that meant not giving in to my base desires and wants. It meant I needed to be there for Cameron for the shitstorm about to come her way.
“If I don’t have a disease, then what’s the problem?” Cameron said. “Why all the cloak-and-dagger shit?”
“Yeah. About that,” I said, pivoting to the issue at hand. “While there is no disease, that bite has had an effect on you. The nausea, the headaches, the low-grade fever?”
“It’s probably just stress or something if it’s not a disease,” Cameron said.
I’d never had to explain this before. A shifter biting a human was beyond rare. It was nearlyalwaysa feral who attacked a human, and in those cases, the human pretty much never survived. Then you had to think of the maternal and paternal bloodlines. So, the rare human who was bitandsurvived only had a fifty-percent shot at turning—at best.
Why the fuck was a lone wolf like me breaking this news?
“It’s more than stress,” I began, speaking slowly. “The tests we ran on your blood show that you have a certain gene through your paternal line, which interacts with this specific bite.”
“A gene?” Cameron frowned. “You checked my DNA? What kind of bite are we talking about? Who was this guy?” Some of the fear had vanished from her face. Now she looked more intrigued and curious. This woman was born to be a journalist.
We couldn’t get bogged down in specifics yet. I had to make her understand.
“The genetic material that passed into you from the bite is causing the gene to evolve,” I said.
She shook her head, furrowing her brow. “What are you talking about, Nate?” She gestured at my sweaty workout clothes. “You’re not exactly a doctor. What do you know about all this? There’s nothing wrong with me.”
“The nausea and headaches?” I reminded her.
“No big deal. Like I said, it’s stress. That’s all.”
“Cold sweats? Sensitivity to temperatures, loud noises, and bright lights? Increased sense of smell, maybe?”
She opened her mouth to respond, but no sound came out. The fear returned to her eyes.
“I know,” I stated. “And not because I’m a doctor, but because I have the same genetic quirk.”
“You?” She shook her head, eyeing me with worry. “Nate, please, for the love of God, tell me what the fuck you’re talking about. You’re scaring me.”
“I know,” I said, coming to grips with what I’d need to do for her to understand. “Cameron, I’m going to give you proof. Visual proof.” My hands were clammy with sweat as I spoke. “You’d never believe it if you didn’t see it with your own eyes. Not in a million years.”
Cameron took a hesitant step back, obviously seeing something in my eyes that scared her more than my words had.
“What’s happening?” she asked, her voice barely above a whisper.
“You’re one of us,” I said. “That’s what you’re evolving into.”
