Pretty Poison by Kari Gregg

humans and their ways. If his family hadn’t reined in their more primal instincts, human physicians wouldn’t have continued medical treatments for Noah. Shifters in the city had no such motivation. An alpha exacted discipline, frequently through the service of betas that ensured his orders were followed. The pack strictly policed enclaves of shifter families and provided schools for their children. Jobs. Safety. As long as a fair and capable alpha led his pack, shifters and humans in cities were more likely to live in peace.
    Noah had risked that. His family had defied pack law and spurned the pact formed with city shifters before Noah had been born. So severely, Wade had forcibly retrieved his mate from their family home. Had other shifters stirred against Wade? Questioned his leadership? Noah was widely considered a lousy wolf, but even he knew the slightest chink in an alpha’s aura of strength could be disastrous, sinking a pack into anarchy.
    If he bloodied his fingertips, he might be able to turn the taps, releasing water to bathe the sex smells away, but any sign of rebellion from him would be dealt with mercilessly.
    Instead, he lurched to the vanity sink and wetted a washcloth there. If Wade had left that faucet intact, wiping away the worst of their sex and dried semen must be okay. Noah industriously lathered soap into the cloth. Nudging his tank top up, he scrubbed his itchy abdomen first, until the skin pinked.
    His heart beat a little funny, sped up.
    When he rinsed the cloth and smoothed it over his arm next, his hand shook.
    Anxiety knotted his gut.
    Though he wiped the irritating dried cum from his ass and thighs, his skin itched worse than before. His thoughts scrambled. The less he smelled of Wade, the more intense the uncomfortable, disconcerting feeling grew. He stubbornly continued with his bath. He wouldn’t spend the day caked with semen and sweat—
    He didn’t realize the shift was upon him until his spine snapped, dropping him in agony to the Spanish tile floor. The spasms remolding muscle and bone overwhelmed everything else.
    * * *
    Panting through dry lips, limbs as heavy as cement, Noah lay in a ball in the den of Wade’s suite. He couldn’t remember pulling himself to the outside door. He didn’t know how he’d managed even a clumsy crawl with Wade’s tank top still looped around his neck. His wolf wasn’t the most graceful without the obstacle of human clothing to hinder it, but the wolf must’ve been desperate to make it this far, a distance farther than Noah had been willing to risk as a man on two feet.
    He shivered, moaning softly as frigid air conditioning pebbled his skin. His body was too depleted by his unwanted shift to lift an arm to reach for pillows, a cushion, anything to warm him. In all his years of surgeries, physical therapy, infections, and injuries, he’d never been this weak.
    The opening door hit his lax arm. Noah couldn’t move.
    No alarm resounded, though, nor did a gasp of surprise break the quiet.
    Eyelids heavy, Noah peered at the pair of boots that drew near and after a finger at his chin nudged his gaze upward, he blinked in drowsy exhaustion at the beta. Who frowned. He set Noah’s leg brace aside and studied him long minutes, until Noah found the strength to speak. “Tired. Can’t get up.”
    The beta’s mouth quirked and he reached for the cell phone attached to his belt. He stabbed a button and brought it to his ear. “Send up liver, gizzards, whatever’s handy, and lots of it. Yes, immediately.” He shoved the phone back into its holder. “You tried to wash off, didn’t you? It’s too soon for you to lose Wade’s scent. Your wolf’s smarter than you are.”
    Noah blew out a quavering breath. “Locked.” They’d locked him in.
    “I said the wolf was smart er .” Chuckling, the beta grabbed him by the biceps and hauled Noah from the carpet, propping him to sit against the spindly legs of a chair. “I didn’t say he was smart.