Change For Me (Werewolf Romance) (The Alpha's Kiss) by Lynn Red Page B

time this happened, right before graduation, he was around, I think,” he paused to swallow. “I can’t believe this is happening. Not right now. It’s not supposed to be now.”
    “Now what?”
    Damon was already turning around. “I’ll be back for you,” he said. “As soon as I know for sure that—”
    “Don’t you leave me, Damon!” I shouted at his back.
    And then, as he was walking into the mouth of the cave in front of him, Damon fell to the ground, suddenly, like he’d been shot or tripped, but he landed with his hands down, and started running like that, straight into the black hole.
    In disbelief, I rubbed my eyes, but then he was just gone without a trace.
    A scream, not of anguish or fear, but of pure pissed-off fury boiled up in me, but just as I was about to let it out, I happened to look down and see something glittering in the leaves where I found Damon.
    Bending down, I picked it up and turned it around in my fingers, examining my own class ring in the sun.
    “Shit,” I swore under my breath.
    It was my ring all right, the one I gave him when we were dating.
    The one he said he’d lost.
    As if my spacy-headed walk back to the Bronco wasn’t bad enough, as soon as I got in and gave the engine its six requisite pumps of gas and it finally turned over, the drive home felt even slower.
    And on top of all that , when I finally pulled in to the driveway hoping for a few minutes of quiet before I could sit my grandpa down and ask him a few questions, there was a car sitting out front.
    So much for getting started on the story.
    “Lily! Why didn’t you ever answer me!” smug, irritating Caitlyn Hodges was sitting in the swing outside the house. In my swing. “Devin’s gone, I haven’t heard from him in a week – ever since graduation – and you’re not talking. What’s going on, Lily?”
    Great .
    For once, I wished that those dying clicks as the Bronco went to rest lasted a whole lot longer.
    “Hey Cat,” I said, trying my best to keep from rolling my eyes too hard. “Why do you think I have any idea where your boyfriend is?”

Six
Damon
    ––––––––
    “C hrist,” Damon swore, standing up for the first time since he went to all fours for a reason he didn’t understand, and ran away from the girl he’d loved for the last two years. He didn’t know why he’d done that, either.
    As broken and bloody as he was when he woke up that morning, every single one of his cuts, scrapes, bruises and blisters was gone. His skin was perfect, untouched; his muscles larger than they’d ever been, but not sore even though he just ran about three miles in a bear crawl.
    Life for him was up and down, as it can be. Since he and Lily split last year, it had been mostly down. When his parents moved to Fort Branch, they never said why exactly, just that it was closer to “home” whatever that meant. Only weeks after they’d moved and four days after he and Lily first laid eyes on each other, he met the man he was going to see.
    At first, he went to the shriveled, ancient man who went only by Poko from time to time, mostly when his father insisted. Slowly, he’d been told about his people, and why he was different from all his friends. Poko became kind of a rock for Damon, in the years when nothing else helped.
    He’d come here – to this cave – and hear stories and tales and parables.
    But why was he going to see Poko? Why now? The last time he saw the old man with the tight, dry, leathery skin was almost six months ago. And back then, Poko said he’d call when the time was right.
    None of it made the first damn bit of sense, but there he was, pulling himself off the ground and plucking little sticks and bits of pine nettle and tiny rocks out of the skin on his knees – skin that not long ago, was cut so deeply it was hanging open.
    The ancient man sat in the dark, next to a fire, deep in the belly of a cave that was a whole lot bigger inside than it looked from the outside. Damon