In Heat for My Stepbrother novel · Chapter 15 of 32

Chapter 15: Full Moon

I didn't sleep.

At six in the morning I called Judd.

"Something's wrong with me," I said.

"Where are you?" I could hear him already moving. "Are you hurt?"

"I have a fever. And I smell like you."

The line went quiet.

"Say that again."

"I smell like you. Pine and woodsmoke and you. It's coming off my skin, Judd. I showered twice."

"Don't move," he said. "I'm at the cells. Hold on."

I heard a door, and stone, and Judd's voice low.

Then a different voice came on, hoarse with sleep.

"Ordway. What did you do?"

"Ket?"

"He's holding his phone through the bars like I'm a zoo animal. Tell me exactly what you smell."

I told her.

There was a long silence.

"Okay," Ket said. "Okay. Sit down."

"I'm sitting."

"You know a wolfless girl never goes into heat."

"Everybody's told me so since I was twenty-one."

"There's one way she does." Ket's voice had gone careful. "My grandmother told me this when I was a kid, and I thought she was making it up. If a wolfless woman finds her true mate, the bond gives her one heat. On the full moon. And with it, for the first time in her life, she gets a scent."

"What scent?"

"His."

I put my hand over my mouth.

"That's why you smell like him," Ket said. "You're not wearing him. You're turning into the other half of him."

"Ket."

"And Liesel, listen to me. Every wolf on this mountain is going to smell it. You've been invisible your whole life. That's over."

Behind her, I heard Judd say my name.

"How bad is the heat?" I asked.

"In a she-wolf? Bad. You want him like water." She hesitated. "But you'll know your own mind. It's not a fog up here, whatever they say in town. You'll want what you want, and you'll know it's you wanting it."

"I already wanted it."

"Yeah," Ket said. "I noticed. Everybody's noticed except you two."

Monday I called in sick for the first time in my life.

The foreman said, "Your stepbrother's here with a shovel and he's useless. Feel better."

By evening the fever was gone.

What was left was worse.

I couldn't sit still.

I paced my four feet of floor.

The moon came up over the hardware store fat and white, and every nerve in my body turned toward the mountain.

Up there, the pack would be running.

Two hundred wolves on the ridge, and the heir with them.

At nine, his truck came down the alley with its lights off.

I was at the door before his boots hit my stair.

He stopped on the top step.

He breathed in.

And his whole body changed.

His hand went flat on the door frame.

His eyes went gold at the edges, then gray again, like he'd pulled them back by force.

"Liesel."

"You can smell me."

"For the first time in five years." His voice came out low and rough. "And it's me. You smell like me."

"Ket says it's the bond."

"I know what it is." He didn't come in. "I skipped the run. Dad's going to notice."

"Then why are you standing on my stair?"

"Because I want you to tell me what you want before I come through that door." He held onto the frame. "Not the heat. You."

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