Raised by Wolves(20)

Personally, I didn’t blame her. In human form, the twins were far more advanced than most newborns, but as wolves, they were already more like toddlers than babies. Once she Changed, Kaitlin could walk (or run) on all fours and stick her damp little puppy nose into everything.

From her crib, Katie yipped again, clearly impatient. Little sis wanted what she wanted when she wanted it.

“Good girl,” I crooned, scooping her up and setting her on the ground.

“Aren’t you supposed to be encouraging her to stay in human form?” Devon asked me. For once, his accent and the set of his impeccably groomed eyebrows were completely his own.

“Moi?” I said innocently. “And how am I supposed to do that, hmmmm?” I threw Devon’s own pet noise right back at him. “I seem to recall something about my being completely human and unable to control the forms of subordinate wolves.”

Trying to force my will on Katie would have gone against everything I fought for on a day-to-day basis—not to mention the fact that opening up my pack-bond enough to force something on either of the babies would have left me vulnerable to having someone else’s will forced on me. That was a can of worms that I wouldn’t open unless and until I had to.

Kaitlin, blissed out in puppy form, sniffed at my shoes and then sneezed.

“And also,” I added, “I like her better this way.”



Katie nosed at the carpet and then gave it a good chew. When it proved recalcitrant enough that she couldn’t pull it up, she growled.

“Who’s a fierce little girl?” I asked her. “Who’s going to kick butt and take names and help her big sister get into all kinds of trouble someday?”

Devon snorted. “Sometimes, I think the term bad influence was invented specifically with you in mind.”

Considering that he knew nothing of my deep-seated need to fight my way to Chase again, that was probably an understatement. Rather than say something that might give away my thoughts, I opted instead for a surefire distraction.

“Not it,” I said.

Dev cocked one eyebrow at me, a trick that it had taken him years to absolutely perfect.

I gestured toward Alex, wrinkling my nose ever-so-slightly. “Not it.” My nose wasn’t anywhere near as sensitive as anyone else’s in this room, but even I could sense something rotten in the state of Denmark.

Unlike me, Devon had an animal’s tolerance of what I referred to as “diaper commodities.” In addition to having superstrength, accelerated healing, awesome senses, and an extended life span, werewolves, I had recently discovered, were also pretty much immune to the horrors of poop.

Devon picked Alex up and sauntered over to the changing table. Alex made some vaguely unhappy sounds, but Devon banished them by singing what seemed to be a punk-rock version of “The Itsy Bitsy Spider.” Halfway through, he segued disturbingly smoothly into a number from Rent.

The music soothed me as much as it did the baby, and I turned my attention back to Kaitlin, who now appeared to be very conscientiously stalking my shoelaces. I smiled half a smile at her puppy antics, wondering what it would be like to be able to join her, to shed my human skin and the confines that went with it and just live in the moment as a wolf.

What would I look like with four legs and fur—would I be light-colored like Katie, or a darker timber, like Dev?

I wondered if I’d be velvety black with ice-blue eyes, like Chase.

And then, I was there again, in that moment, watching his muscles tense and pull and send electric pulses through my body as he Changed. With equally little warning, I was elsewhere and another set of blue eyes glistened yellow as a large, gray wolf with a white star on his forehead leapt for the throat of a human man whose features had long been replaced by Callum’s in my memory.

Come out, come out, wherever you are, little one. No sense hiding from the Big Bad Wolf. I’ll always find you in the end...

A hand on my shoulder made me jump.



You’ve got to stop doing this to yourself, Callum told me with his eyes, but out loud, he didn’t say anything to me at all—he just squeezed my shoulder once and turned his attention to Kaitlin.

“Ach, Katie-girl, what are we going to do with you?” His brown eyes soft and his mouth set with mock sternness, Callum scooped puppy-Kaitlin up in his arms. She lapped at his face and he bit back an indulgent smile. “If your mama sees you like this, she’ll not be pleased,” Callum said, before puffing out a breath that had my little sister sniffing like crazy.

Even without being a Were, I knew what Callum would smell like to her: safe and strong and home. He was the alpha, and in our world, that made him as close and important to Kaitlin as her own parents. As important as I hoped that I would be to her someday.