Sienna stops in a small clearing, running a hand through her hair and exhaling hard at the sky. For a long moment, she just stands there, shoulders rising and falling, and all I can dois watch her. Even furious, even hurt, she is beautiful in the dappled morning light.
My eyes widen when she begins to strip. She tosses her shirt to the ground. Her jeans follow. Then her bra. She turns away from where I’m hidden as she hooks her thumbs into her underwear and steps out of them. I watch her crouch down to tie her clothes around her leg with a string she produces from the pocket of her discarded jeans.
She looks up and scans her surroundings. When she faces my direction, I see her eyes sharpen, her wolf coming into them.
She’s going to shift. I step forward, ready to announce myself, to stop her. She can’t run alone out here, not after yesterday, not after—
She shifts.
The change is fluid and practiced, her human form folding seamlessly into wolf. Her fur is a rich, russet brown, streaked with lighter cream along her chest and belly. Lean, long legged, elegant in a way I didn’t expect from an office-bound strategic advisor. She’s smaller than me, smaller than most alphas, but there’s nothing delicate about her. She is built for speed and precision.
She stretches, shakes herself out, and takes off.
My wolf snarls to life, pacing the inside of my skull. Follow. Follow. Follow.
I try to hold on to reason for about three seconds. Then, I strip out of my clothes, tie them to my leg, and shift.
The change crashes over me in a wave of heat and bone and fur, and when it settles, I drop onto four paws and inhale the forest around me.
I catch her scent instantly, laced now with the earthier musk of her wolf form, and I run.
I don’t follow her directly. I sweep wide, circling around to run parallel to her path, staying a good fifty yards off to her leftthrough denser brush. Careful to keep the wind cutting across us sideways so my scent never drifts into her nose. She won’t know I’m here.
She’s fast. Faster than I expected. Her paws barely seem to touch the ground, the blur of her body weaving through trees with an ease that speaks of a lot more running than I would have guessed a corporate executive gets to do. She’s happy out here. I can see it in the way she runs—not like she’s going anywhere but running for the sake of it, for the joy of it, for the burn in her muscles and the wind on her face.
I pace her easily. My wolf is much bigger, has longer legs, and I’ve run these woods my entire life. But I find myself matching her pace rather than overtaking her, content to watch.
She’s magnificent.
Don’t, I tell myself.
I watch her anyway.
She runs for nearly an hour. Across the ridge, down the valley, along a deer path I’ve known since I was a pup. She never slows, never seems tired, and when I finally see her stumble to a halt, I realize she has found the lake.
Not the big one on the western boundary. The little one tucked into the hollow between two rises, fed by a cold spring, ringed with birch trees. My private place. The one I used to come to as a boy to escape my father’s endless lectures. I haven’t been here in years.
Of course she found it.
I slow down, drifting into the trees at the edge of the clearing, my paws silent on the pine needles. I stay low, hidden behind a thick cluster of ferns.
Sienna shifts back.
The change rolls through her quickly, and she’s a woman again, breathing hard, a fine sheen of sweat on her forehead and her hair wild around her shoulders. She stretches, arms over herhead, spine arching, and my wolf makes a sound I am grateful no one else can hear.
She undoes the string around her leg, letting her clothes fall onto a smooth, low rock. I should look away. I should absolutely look away. I should melt back into the forest and give her the privacy she thinks she has. Go back to the estate and never speak of this.
But I don’t.
I shift back because my wolf is too much, my blood too hot. I need to be human to process what I’m seeing. I stand there behind the ferns, naked and breathless, staring.
Beautiful.
She is so beautiful, it hurts to look at her.
Sleek lines and glowing skin, the curve of her back flowing into the soft swell of her hips, her thighs, the long column of her legs. Her hair falls in a dark sweep past her shoulder blades. She turns slightly to test the water with one foot, and I catch the profile of her breast, the graceful line from her throat to her collarbone to her chest.
My entire body grows rigid.