Chapter 1
Laura
You’re still leading James on with that ‘live in the moment’ bullshit.
Meryl’s voice rattled around my brain, drowning out the sounds of wholesome family fun. I brooded in a lawn chair, scowling into the distance while the full humans attached to the Pack picnicked and cavorted in the backyard of the Winchester Alpha’s house.
Just admit it, you’re living with James now. The only thing you haven’t done is change your mailing address.
“I don’t think I’m ever gonna be comfortable with all the nudity.” Today’s non-sequitur was brought to you by Emma, batshit crazy Alpha female of the Winchester Pack.
I slanted my eyes in her direction. “No one is naked.”
She snorted, her brown hair pulled up in a high ponytail, sunglasses resting forgotten on top of her head, no longer needed in the waning light.
It was a rare full moon that coincided with a Saturday and the mild weather of early summer. Emma - not your typical Pack leader, in the fact that she couldn’t actually turn all the way into a wolf - had decided that there was no reason why only shifters were included in the pack activities. So, with a regal wave of her hand, (no really, there was an actual wave) she decreed that whenever possible, when full moon festivities coincided with a weekend, that all adjunct pack members - spouses, children, siblings - would participate as well.
Hence the full house and yard, with children running and screaming, adults grilling, fighting, and flirting, and Emma and I, smack dab in the middle of it all, not really belonging to either group.
Freaks among freaks, Emma called us.
But my unusual origin story wasn’t what played on my mind as I sat enjoying the last warm rays of the sinking sun.
No, my undefined relationship with James was front and center, taking up the majority of my brain capacity.
Not that Emma was going to tolerate that. No, the wench was bound and determined to pull me onto the crazy train with her.
“While no one right here is naked, except for Joey,” she said, absently indicating the nudist toddler who refused to be confined by society’s obsession with being covered, “out there, in the trees, there are dozens of naked people right now. How are they comfortable with that?”
Rolling my eyes, I sighed. “They’re not naked, Emma. They’re covered in fur.”
She crossed her arms, her eyes scanning the party, smiling in acknowledgment to a called greeting.
“Yeah, but isn’t that unethical?”
“Not if it’s theirs,” I shot back, thinking of the wolf shifters cavorting among the trees.
She made a hmph sound and fell silent, leaving my thoughts to drift back to James.
We’d been together as a couple for more than a year. To say the start of our relationship had been rocky would’ve been the understatement of the millennia.
When he’d turned me down, once again, after the power transference with Emma, he’d made me promise that we’d talk the next day, when I was no longer under any influence from whatever magical shit Emma had pulled. I’d agreed, confident in the moment that we were finally going to be together. But that confidence had fled in the sober light of the morning and thinking back on it now, it was a miracle we managed to get out of our own way.
