He’d just picked her. Holy crap. She was halfway bonded to Ryan Travis. Her wolf leapt for sheer joy inside her and snarled at the same time. The pull of the moon was excruciating. Her skin burned and she could feel Ryan running his hands up and down her arms like she was rubbing them herself. The sensation was uncanny. She knew it would happen. Everyone did. Having sex with your Fated mate started the physical half of the bond. The part that made you feel everything your mate felt. Always.

But Ryan hadn’t said the spell yet. She didn’t have tattoos. She was still vulnerable to… Kate turned to look inside the truck. Christian’s ropes and torn clothes were there, but he wasn’t, and Ryan had left the driver’s side door open.

She couldn’t help the little moan of worry that slipped from her throat.

“Hey,” Ryan’s voice called her back from the edge of the shift one more time. It wouldn’t work again. She could feel the magick ripping through her control. “Stay with me. Come on, Kate. It’s okay to shift. Just stay with me.”

His eyes were almost completely gold. But he was sincere. She could hear it in his voice. Ryan Travis had finally made a choice and it was her. She still couldn’t believe it. All her attempts to make him care had been useless. The damn man had needed to see her being stolen away to finally come to his senses.

At least he’d chosen her in the end. She wasn’t sure what she would’ve done if Christian had succeeded in bonding her.

But what about Ryan’s pack? What would he do now? What would they do? Gods, she couldn’t think right now with the fire of the change licking at her body. She wished she could stay naked and plastered to Ryan. Wished they could make love over and over and over. But…the magick rippled around her and she shivered. “I. Have. To. Shift,” she panted.

Kate shoved Ryan back and dropped to the ground. The shift happened before her knees touched the gravel drive and her dress and bra ripped away. Her paws sank into the gravel and she shook her head, flapping her ears satisfactorily back and forth. Freedom. Her wolf had needed out so badly. She’d never held it back like that before. But Ryan had been right. It was possible. More so than she’d realized. At least for a few minutes. Once the moon had truly grown full, there was no restraining it.

She glanced up at a still-half-naked Ryan. So how was he holding back? Probably his sheer stubborn will. Poor wolf.

“Shit.” He looked around, like he was just realizing Christian had escaped. “I don’t know where he is. He’s desperate, Kate. But you’re mine now, and if he tries to take you or hurt you…I’ll kill him.”

Kate curled a lip at Ryan and growled. There would be no killing or stealing. Christian couldn’t bond to her while they were wolves, and the man needed their sympathy, not their hatred. He’d been roped into this through no fault of his own, and he was just trying to keep his sister safe. It was her damn grandparents who deserved to have the shit beaten from their selfish, greedy bodies. Not only had they been willing to force her into a mating, they’d changed a human and blackmailed him into kidnapping her to save his sister. How screwed up was that?

Ryan dropped to one knee. He reached out and stroked her side. “You are so beautiful, Kate.”

Pleasure skittered across her skin beneath her fur. She loved being touched as a wolf. It didn’t happen often. She normally shifted with other wolves, which meant there was no one left to do any petting or ear scratching.

“I’m sorry it took me so long,” he panted out. His other knee hit the gravel as he started to shift. His clothes ripped. He hadn’t gotten them all the way off and his wolf was a good deal bigger than his human form. Hers was too. Moonbound wolves were almost double the size and weight of an average natural wolf.

She leapt away from Ryan’s large silvery black animal. Hers needed to run. So much. And she loved the feel of grass beneath her paws instead of the sand and rocks she was limited to back home. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d run on grass, unless she counted that one time she and Gretchen had shifted on a local golf course in El Paso when they were teenagers. That had been a little scary…but fun.

A head bumped her shoulder and she chuffed at Ryan. He trotted ahead of her a few paces and then looked over his shoulder, waiting. She jumped into a run and sailed past him toward the rise of a hill just ahead. She let her body stretch out. The breeze in her fur felt amazing. Being a wolf felt amazing. Even with all the crazy drama in her family, being a wolf was one of her greatest pleasures in life.

They stopped at the rise of the hill and leaned against each other. It felt so right. So natural to finally be together. She’d been ready to leave. Ready to run the second the wolf came out. But Ryan had changed everything. Now she was his. Gods it felt good to know that. She’d wanted nothing more than to belong to him since the moment she’d walked into the VonBrandts’ library and realized they were Fated mates.

When the moon released them, they’d have to deal with the choices that were made, but for twelve hours they would get to just be. No family. No human drama. Just running and being part of the natural world. In the morning, Ryan could finish the bond…so long as he didn’t decide he’d been rash. A small niggling worry crept into her heart as they ran down the other side of the hill. There was still a chance—a small one—Ryan could change his mind and leave her hanging.

They weren’t bonded completely.

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***

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Ryan let her run down the hill ahead of him, making a path through the long, gold-tipped grass. She was so beautiful, her yellow coat blending in with the sun-kissed countryside. His wolf came to a stop, just so he could admire her. He’d had his fingers in that coat. He knew it was soft and luxurious. But it looked so much better in motion.

She was really a thing of beauty. All graceful lines and lithe muscles. Just the same as she was in her human body.

The blonde wolf turned, raising her ears like she was waiting for him, and he trotted after her. Kate waited until he was just within nipping distance and then ran on ahead. They had been doing this for hill after hill.

He’d stop to watch, she’d run ahead, he’d catch up, and she would make him chase her. They were almost to his favorite hill of all. The one overlooking the Trewitt ranch. Just a few more, and they’d be there.

Kate yelped a quick bark and ran over the hill, not stopping this time. Ryan’s heartbeat thrummed, the blood pumping through his wolf veins, and he sped up his pace. But when he got over the hill, she wasn’t there. Just waving grass and…

But he could smell her. Somewhere.

She still smelled like him.

Gods, he loved that.

He stopped on the crest of the greening hill and glanced around, pretending he didn’t sense her hiding just below him, crouched down in the grass, waiting to pounce. Ryan turned, giving her his back, and she launched.

His legs buckled and they rolled down the hill, tumbling over each other on their way down, until they were a mass of limbs at the bottom. He’d never been this happy, this careless, before in his whole life. This was the kind of play he’d always lived for. His family wasn’t much for the actual run part of the change. Most of the time, if they didn’t hunt, they’d just hunker down in their yards and sleep like their humans would have slept.

Ryan had always preferred to run while he was a wolf, then sleep when the moon gave him back his skin. It was exhilarating to allow the animal to take over so completely. Other than rodeo, shifting was the only release he’d ever had.

It had surprised him a little to learn that Kate had never practiced holding the wolf back. Like she hadn’t been taught. He forgot, sometimes, how different the individual pack families were. As he lay in the grass with his new mate, looking up at the purpling sky, he almost let himself think about how perfect it would be to do this every month, with Kate. For the first time, he had a partner to run with. To sleep in the grass with. To be at his side.

His whole life, he’d been the one running the hills alone. One of his cousins would come along sometimes, but most of the Trewitts tended to stay on the ranch. They were a pack, for sure, but they were almost never wolves. Hell, his cousin Ellie’s dog ran with him more than his own brother did. Beau had always blamed it on needing to keep the horses calm. They needed to have their wolves tightly leashed for the horses to trust them.

Sometimes the shifted wolves kept working right alongside the humans on the ranch. More than once, Ryan had seen his mother and father digging weeds out of the garden in their wolf forms or hauling bags of feed from one side of the ranch to the other. Like they couldn’t afford to let the wolf completely take over. Like they couldn’t be wild.

That was his family, though. They allowed their wolves to come out only as needed, and they rarely shifted outside of the moon. From an early age, he’d been holding back his wolf. He could still remember trying to bear down on his first shift. It had been painful that first time, but his family had insisted that he make the effort.

It’ll give you more control over the animal, they’d always taught him. And while there was something beautiful about the way Kate wanted to give in to hers, it also gave him pause. To be that unhindered, that uncontrolled. It was unfamiliar.

He looked over at Kate, who stared up at the sky right along with him. She balanced him. Wasn’t this what he’d always wanted, whether he’d consciously realized it or not?

Her wolf’s eyes met his, and she jumped up, giving a playful growl deep in her throat. She ran off again, and he chased her. And they continued on like that across the prairies until the sun went below the horizon.

Ryan brought her to the top of the hill that overlooked the ranch, but they went no farther. She stopped beside him, and they both stared down at the little cluster of lights where his mother and her brothers all lived in a little cropping of houses surrounded by corrals and two large barns that were sort of communal property.

His mother, Rosalee, was the oldest Trewitt sister of that generation. There was one more sister below her, then Bracken, then two other brothers. Ryan and Beau still lived in the big farmhouse with their mother, and he could see her kitchen and living room lights were both on. She was home. Probably even sleeping on the floor in the living room with the television on. It was so like her.

As much as Kate brought him peace, there was still a yawning hole inside him—the painful knowledge that choosing her, now and forever, meant turning his back on his destiny. Bracken had trained him to be the person who would give up everything to serve the pack.

But Ryan had failed his uncle. Failed the whole pack. All his training, all his willpower, everything had melted away in face of the fear of losing Kate. He’d never felt so much clarity in all his life as he had in the moment he’d marked his mate.

But it wouldn’t come without consequences.

In order to give Kate what she wanted, what she deserved, he would have to be the man his mother had raised him to be. He would have to give the relationship his all. He didn’t know any other way to be.

He curled up with Kate on the top of the hill, letting let his body relax into hers. They would stay warm together, and they would sleep, and when they woke up, he would complete the spell.

They may still have hardships ahead—her grandfather was a ruthless, remorseless man. Ryan may still need Falcon’s help. But for the time being, all that mattered to him was her.

Just her.