Chapter 1
A headache throbbed at the base of Con’s skull. He’d been planning to hit his favorite nightclub when he finished work, but going home, showering, and getting dressed to go out was now far too much effort. The noise and alcohol wouldn’t help, and there was no point in going to the club if he wasn’t in the mood to pick anyone up. While the lure of easy sex was tempting, he couldn’t be bothered making the effort, and he knew from experience that being lazy ended up leading to regrets come daylight. And he couldn’t be bothered with that either.
If going to bed alone was looking like a good idea, he must have been getting old. Or maybe it was that he’d seen more death and blood tonight than he had in a while, and dealing with drunks, flashing lights, and screaming was too close to how he’d already spent his night.
“You alright?” his partner asked.
Con grunted as he mopped out the ambulance. The stink of antiseptic filled his lungs. This was the worst part of the job. Even in his human form, his sense of smell was better than it should be. “Headache. Probably didn’t drink enough water.”
They’d been flat out from the moment he’d clocked on. Friday and day one of the full moon were always going to be a bad combination, as even humans when a little wild. The weekend was going to be hell, but he was lucky enough to have it rostered off until fuck that o’clock on Monday morning. Most people knew it as four am.
They finished cleaning, made sure the ambulance was fully stocked, and clocked off.
He definitely didn’t feel like picking up or clubbing now. However, he was too wired to go home and sleep. It was part stress and part the full moon in his blood. While the moon had nothing to do with the ability to shift, there was something about a full moon that made him want to run on four feet, and if he was far enough away from people, howl.
Yeah, a run. That was exactly what he needed.
He flexed his fingers, already feeling the heat rising in his blood. Like lust but rougher, wilder, and just as heady and all consuming. His heartbeat quickened as he walked through the parking lot. The night was so well lit by the moon, he could see as well as daylight.
His hearing was more acute than a human’s, too. There were rats near the bins and three staff gossiping by their cars before they went home. His footsteps crunched over the gravel as he walked toward his car.
The night and the promise of a run were already waking him up. The hair on his arms prickled as though he was already sprouting fur. Not yet. But soon.
He knew the best places for a run that were outside pack territories. While it was safer to use his pack’s grounds, he couldn’t be bothered driving to where his family ran or to where his other pack, if it could be called that, ran.
The Outcast Pack was a loose collection of gay wolves who’d either left or been booted out of their pack. He hadn’t been kicked out, and he still saw his family, but they’d been pretty clear that they didn’t like the way he lived and didn’t want him spreading wild ideas to the younger generation—wouldn’t want them growing up less bigoted and chained to the outdated and pointless rules, after all. He rarely ran with his family because he didn’t want them to have to choose between him and pack.
The sooner wolves like that, pack leaders especially, got their heads out of their asses, and stopped living by rules been created centuries ago, the better. Those rules had kept them safe during the witch and wolf hunts, but the world had changed, and if the wolves didn’t adapt, they were going to find themselves in strife.
But what did he know? His parents were almost at the bottom of the pack’s hierarchy; he was at the bottom. So he was keeping the peace because he didn’t want to be kicked out. Meeting Kyle, the unofficial leader of the Outcast Pack, had probably saved him from doing something stupid that would have resulted in him being banished.
Con pressed the key fob, and his car flashed its lights. He slid in, started it, and connected his phone to pull up the map. Where did he want to run?
He closed his eyes for a heartbeat, scrolling through the various places in his mind. All parks were out because of the full moon; too many wolves and humans tended to be out a lot more on well-lit nights—they also got into more trouble. There was a beach that was no good for swimming or fishing, so it had been designated a dog beach. He’d been there a few times at night, and it was always deserted.
As much as he didn’t like sand in his fur—or anywhere else for that matter, the idea of enjoying the moon and tide was a siren call he couldn’t resist. He pulled up the location on his phone and let the tech tell him where to go.
Twenty minutes later, he pulled into the car park. It was empty, as expected, and a smile formed for the first time that night. He stripped off his uniform and bundled it into the trunk of the car. The gravel bit into his bare feet as he pulled a black backpack out of the trunk. Inside was a small towel, a pair of shorts, and T-shirt. Enough to get him out of trouble if someone showed up.
He shut the trunk and locked the car, then bent down. Beneath the car was a lock box. He put in the code, opened the box, and put his car key inside before relocking it. Then he paused to listen. Nothing. He sniffed the air even though he knew if someone were watching from downwind, he wouldn’t smell them. He was sure he was alone. Yet there was a tingle of warning he couldn’t dislodge.
After another glance around and knowing that even if a human were watching, they wouldn’t believe their eyes, he drew up the shifting heat.
Warmth raced up his spine. He rolled his shoulders and cracked his neck, then let it take over. Shifting always felt like a really good stretch. Liked he’d been cramped in the wrong shape for too long; it felt much the same coming back to human.
He dropped onto four feet as he gave into the change. He shook, a full body shudder from nose to tail, then stretched with paws forward and butt in the air. His back cracked again. Yeah, that was more like it. His tongue lolled, and he breathed in the night.
Salt and sand. The scrub and the litter in the nearby bin. The hot rubber of his tires and the lingering scent of exhaust. Beneath that was the sharp scent of the disinfectant on his shoes in the trunk of the car.
He tilted his head to listen to his surrounds with more acute hearing. The pulse of the waves on the beach, nocturnal life in the scrub, and in the distance, the rumble of a car or two.
He was alone.
Good.
He didn’t want a human reporting a large gray dog roaming the beach. Getting picked up by the ranger was fairly high on most wolf shifters' list of fears, his included.
For a few moments, he didn’t move, letting his eyes become accustomed to the improved vision and the way the night became less shadowy. He’d never feared the night, even as a kid, before he’d known about shifting. Back then, he hadn’t realized that his eyesight was better than the other kids at school. All he’d known was to not tell them he could smell their dinner on them and that he knew when they hadn’t showered in days.
When he was around ten, his mother had told him what they were, before his dad had shown him. It was a long five-year wait until he was finally able to shift. The first time it happened, he’d freaked.
He snatched up the bag in his jaws and trotted over to the path that led to the beach. Beach was a euphemism. It was a strip of sand that hugged a rocky coast. In stormy weather, it was swallowed by the sea. He’d found this place because of work. He’d been called out because someone had fallen from the rocks and was in a bad way. This was the dangerous end. At the other end were the much softer dunes, and that was the popular end where people took their dogs for long runs.
He sniffed the signpost that warned people about the tide and the steepness of the path and reminded them to pick up after their dog. He lifted his leg. This was his beach, and every wolf around knew that. Though sometimes he’d smell another.
They usually pissed on the next post, leaving his scent alone.
If they peed on his post, it would have been the start of a territory war, and no one could really be bothered with that. This wasn’t the Middle Ages. These days, wolves in suburbia rubbed along and kept out of each other’s way where possible.
He trotted down the path, his feet sure on the rocky slope and in no rush, but at the same time, wanting to make the most of the dark.
It was only when his paws sunk into the sand that he dropped his bag—in the scrub so no one would pinch it—and then let himself run.
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