My heart stopped the moment Elise asked me about what happened on the mountain last summer.

Everything had seemed fine and dandy for the first few minutes. I’d come in with the beers and burgers, as well as an order of French fries and an order of onion rings on the side because I hadn’t bothered to check to see which she’d like.

I mean, she’d seemed a little tense. Like a geyser just struggling to see whether or not it would burst. After a moment of waiting, trying to hold back, she finally asked her question.

But the mountain a year ago?

She could have asked any question. Why that one? Had she overheard me and Spike? I slumped down in one of the chairs at the small table and cracked open a beer.

“I got a text,” she explained as she, still sitting cross-legged on the bed a good distance from me, pointed at her phone for emphasis. “They said if you told me your secret, and I texted what it was to them, they would give me more information on Eve.”

I gritted my teeth and tried to swallow. My mouth was dry, though, and it was like trying to choke down a glass of sand. I tipped back the bottle, slugging down about half of it in one go. “Elise,” I murmured, stopping to wipe the back of my hand across my mouth. “Don’t.”

She rolled her shoulders forward a little, slouching down, defeated.

“How bad is it?”

“You can literally ask about anything else. My childhood, what I did in high school, who I popped my cherry with, my time in the Special Forces over in the sandbox. But not this. Please not this.”

“It’s a big secret, then? Too big to share with me?”

“You mean you don’t have any you wouldn’t share with me?”

She sighed, looked away. “Look,” she said after a long while, “I’m going to be honest here. I know you served in the military. I know you were a cop. I know you’ve done things you weren’t proud of, things you wish would just go away. That’s the way life is, sometimes. I even know you’ve probably killed people.”

I took a long swig of my beer, trying to think of what I could tell her to get her off my back. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to tell her. Or that I wouldn’t ever tell her. It’s that the time wasn’t right.

“But why is this such a big secret? What happened up there, Jake? Why won’t you tell me?”

How do you politely explain to the woman of your dreams that you’re actually a wolf in human clothing? Or a human that could pull on wolf clothing? Not only that, but what she wanted to know was going to probably fundamentally alter her entire life.

I opened my mouth to say something, but just decided the beer bottle needed to be there before any of my half-assed, stupid words tumbled out. I took another drink. Yep, that was a good plug.

“I just,” she said after a minute or so of my silence, “I thought you cared about me and I thought you cared about helping me find my sister. That this was important to you, and I was important to you.”

I looked up at her, eyes wide. “I do, Elise.”

“I know we haven’t spent a lot of time together yet, but I think the last person I spent this much time with was my pops. Before that, it was probably my best friend Jeanine. And that was in high school!”

I sighed. “Yeah, I get it. Last people I spent this much time with were my unit. I don’t even spend this much time with my co-workers.”

“Why won’t you tell me, then? What’s so bad about it? Did you hurt someone?”

I wiped a hand down my face and scratched my beard as I groaned out loud. “It’s not that simple. It’s not an ‘I killed a man in Reno just to watch him die’ kind of thing. It’s bigger than that.”

“Like a government secret?”

I shook my head. “No, neither of us would go to jail if I told you. Well, I don’t think we would.”

“Then just tell me, Jake!”

I’d slowly begun to realize that arguing with her wasn’t going to get me anywhere. The look on her face, the set of her chin, and the way her brow was furrowed told me she wasn’t going to back off. I sighed again.

“Jake? I…I care about you, too, okay? But I need to know now. If this is so bad you don’t want to tell me, then I feel like I have to know. I have to be able to say whether this is bad or not.”

Another swig of beer and silently regretted that I didn’t pick up a fifth of whiskey to go with it. That was it. This was the moment I knew I was going to have to tell her what I really was. I was going to have to open that part of my life to her inspection, so she could at least see how deep the rabbit hole went, and how big and bizarre the world could really be.

But, still, I needed to check to make sure she wanted to go through with it. It was the only thing that was right. Hurting her was the last thing I wanted.

“Okay,” I said before draining the last of my beer and grabbing two more. I popped both tops and got up to give her one. “I’ll tell you. But before I do, I need you to know that this is going to change things.”

She took a drink of her beer. “Between us?”

“Everything. What I’m going to show you, you’re not going to have ever seen anything like it before.”

She leaned forward, saying in a voice barely above a whisper, “Do you have, like, two dicks or something?”

I gave her a blank look. What? “Fucking seriously, Elise?”

She shrugged, turning a little pink. “What? That’d be pretty wild, wouldn’t it?”

I sighed and shook my head. “I’m serious. This is big.”

“Okay,” she said with a nod, “okay, I get it. So what’s the big secret? Just tell me already.”

“I’ve really gotta show it to you. You won’t believe me otherwise. I promise you’ll just think I’m crazy.” I set my beer on the nightstand before turning and heading for the bathroom.

“This isn’t like a stripper routine or something, is it?” she asked me.

I looked back over my shoulder. “Elise. Please just open the door when I signal you to, okay?”

She gave me a wide-eyed looked as she took another swig of her beer. “This is going to be bad, isn’t it?”

“It’s gonna be something. Just…just don’t be alarmed. I mean, you will be, but there’s no need to be scared, okay? I’m right here.” I stepped into the bathroom and saw Elise’s look of confusion and unease before I closed the door. I took a deep breath and began to strip out of my clothes. This was the biggest decision I’d ever made in my life. Bigger than joining the Marines. Bigger than joining the police force. Even bigger than choosing to move out to Colorado and join Frost Security.

It wasn't that I was worried about my wolf taking over. Like I said before, I've never had a problem around humans. Lacy had seen me as a wolf before, and I hadn't gone for her. Hadn't even considered it. No, this was more about telling my mate.

“Everything okay?” Elise called as she got up off the bed and came over.

“Yeah,” I said as I folded everything carefully and placed them on the small counter, which was so cramped part of my stack of garments overlapped with the sink. “Just give me a minute. I’ll let you know when you should open the door.”

“Why don’t you just come outside on your own?” she asked, sounding a little confused.

“Doesn’t work that way, that’s all.”

Then, I began to shift. I took my time, not wanting to cause myself any pain or any more noise than I had to. The little enclosed bathroom was barely able to hold me as a human, let alone when I was shifted into my wolf form. But I didn’t know how else I could do this without her freaking out over the way my body changed. Fur sprouting, bones changing positions? Not exactly an attractive sight.

Naked, I dropped to all fours, my fingers shortening as I splayed them over the cheap linoleum flooring, my body arching, my tail growing, my jaw lengthening. As slow as I was going, none of it particularly hurt. But I was still structurally altering my body, so it wasn’t exactly what you’d call comfortable, either.

“Jake?” Elise asked after I’d been changing for a while and hadn’t said anything. “Are you okay?”

Thankfully, my vocal cords hadn’t changed yet. “Just a minute,” I gasped as the thick and silky black fur began to sprout across my body.

Just a little longer.

“Jake? What’s wrong?”

Nothing. I shifted the bulk of my wolf-body around in the bathroom, the claws of my hind and forepaws clicking on the cheap tile as I licked my chops.

This was it. I couldn’t believe I was fucking doing this, betting it all on black this way. But what other choice did I have? She said she cared about me, and I believed her. And she knew I cared about her. I’d never felt this way before, not in my whole life. The dry mouth, the itchy paws, the whine at the back of my throat that just wanted to come pouring out of my muzzle.

“Jake?” she asked.

I snuffled a deep breath, let out a baritone sigh. Now or never, Jake. Now or never.

I reached up a paw and scraped just to the left of the doorknob.

“You alright?” Elise asked worriedly. “Jake, can’t you hear me? Can you answer me? Are you okay?”

I seriously contemplated barking right then, but I figured that’d be too confusing. Instead I scratched again.

“God, I hope I don’t have to call a fucking ambulance,” she said as she came over and put her hand on the knob.

I sat back on my haunches as she began to turn the knob.

She began to pull open the door. “Jake, you’d better be okay.”

I stayed perfectly still as the door swung open. I locked my wolf-eyes with her wide human ones. She stepped back, her mouth a soundless circle, a black hole where no scream could escape.

Elise started backing away slowly her face still frozen in fear. Her eyes moved rapidly behind me, trying to find me. She was scared. I gave a little whine and wagged my tail to show that I wasn’t going to harm her, but that made her back away even faster.

“Oh, my God,” she squeaked. She was on the verge of tears. “Please don’t hurt me! Where’s Jake? Did you eat him? What are you?”

I fought the urge to laugh, knowing my large, sharp teeth would traumatize her even more. Instead, I placed a paw awkwardly on my chest, hoping she’d understand.

“Okay, everything’s okay. He said not to be scared,” she whispered to herself frantically as she stared at me, her eyes so wide I was scared they would pop out. “He knew this would happen. He knew it. He said not to be scared….” Her eyes then sharpened as realization hit her. “Jake?” she asked as her beer slipped from her grip, hit the floor, and spilled in a fountain of hoppy foam. “Jake? Oh my fucking God, you’ve got to be fucking kidding me. How?”

I nodded my head in a very un-wolflike gesture.

“No way…” she whispered, her eyes rolling back into her head before she could finish her sentence.

I darted forward, faster than any human, and managed to cushion her fall with my furry body as she collapsed to the motel room floor.

Well, that could have gone better.