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shifted now. For the first time. Christina, on the other hand, remained fur-free and two-legged. An undesired mate.
    Anton was out there with them. He hadn’t wanted to go, and he told that to whoever it was who’d come to the door. He’d said he had too many things to do, but whoever it was had convinced him that he was needed out there. An extra pair of eyes on the wolves’ mates, who might be disoriented in their new beast forms. They may run off and forget there were women inside them.
    They howled and howled and howled. She’d never hated the sound so much, never hated being a wolf so much before that moment.
    The pack must have moved farther away, because the howls became softer and were spaced farther apart.
    Finally, sleep overtook her troubled mind.
    ___
    Christina dreamed of her reluctant mate. Of those full lips on her skin. Of his hands on her feminine swells. Legs entwined, sharing a bed and—ultimately, their bodies. She’d never been the forward type before—had never initiated affection, knowing she wasn’t likely to get any—but how else was she going to get any in return from him? Maybe if she touched him, he’d understand. She had to get him to touch her, like the wolf in her dreams. The one who held her so gently but so firmly while he pressed into her, sating his desire and filling her up. At the moment, she might even be content with just holding hands. At least that would be something .
    She lay awake in the dark. Something had pulled her out of her sleep, so she listened.
    Grumbling. Then swearing, coming from the front room. She pushed up onto her forearms and canted her head.
    “Fucking rain,” came Anton’s mutter.
    Yes. Rain. She heard the patters against the window now. Winter rain in the desert. Is that an unusual thing? It wouldn’t have been back at home. Might even have been snowing. Had felt like it was going to when she’d left.
    She scooted to the side of the bed and turned herself out of it. She squinted through the window and saw the rain bouncing off the stones in the empty flowerbed next to the walkway. Probably wouldn’t rain for long, but it was a nice sound to sleep to. Rain had always made her yearn for the bed. Sleep could wait a moment, though.
    She headed toward the sliver of light beneath the bedroom door and pulled the knob. From the adjacent bathroom, she could hear Anton’s grumbles. She padded closer, enough to catch his reflection in the mirror he stood in front of. His injured eye was closest to the door, so he couldn’t see her yet.
    He was covered in mud. It was packed into his hair, stuck to every crevice and bulging muscle. He closed his eyelids and rubbed a washcloth across them. The lid of the left eye, though badly scarred, along with his forehead and cheek on that side, did actually move, though not as much. When his eyes were open, his left eye’s lid was always at half-mast, as if mourning its own loss. It was a loss. If both of his eyes were the same deep, dark brown of the right one, she probably wouldn’t be able to look him in the face. He’d be too intense. So handsome—beautiful, even—but hard to look at for long.
    Letting the cloth fall away, he blinked several times, and his head turned in her direction. “I wouldn’t have seen you if you’d backed away,” he said. “But you sighed. I heard you.”
    “I did?”
    He grunted and turned his face away from the mirror. “Can’t see worth a shit, but I can still hear.”
    “If I sighed, it probably wasn’t for the reason you think.”
    “Humor me and tell me why, then.”
    “I—” Christina stepped closer and nudged the door open a bit more. Why was she hiding in the dark? “If I sighed, it was because you’re naked.”
    “Happens a lot with shifters.”
    “Maybe, but I’m only concerned with one particular shifter, and he’s naked and muddy and maybe it’s not such a bad sight.” If his nose was as good as his ears, he already knew what she thought of his body.
    He