I lifted my shirt up and over my head, then slipped out of my shorts. When I stood naked and bare amidst the glittering stars and cold night sky, my breasts peeked and my skin pimpled into goosebumps. Strangely, though, I didn’t feel cold.

A steady beating thrum came from Kaillen, his heart’s lub-dub increasing with each second that passed. The sound of his ragged breaths came next, not loud, but subtle enough that I wouldn’t have detected them before these new sensations began to take hold of me.

When I glanced at him, the hunter’s jaw was locked, his throat bobbing in a swallow as his gaze drank me in.

“Are you okay?” I asked as that heated feeling began in my blood again. I shifted from foot to foot, a restlessness beginning to consume me.

He made a non-committal sound, but that wildness stayed in his eyes. His expression was so fierce, and filled with so much longing and heat, that I had a feeling he was having a hard time remembering language. Another groan came from him before he finally said in a deeply guttural voice, “Tala, you’re so fucking beautiful.”

I turned to face him, a part of me aware of how unabashedly ballsy I was being. I was naked. Outside. And I didn’t give two shits about it.

I just wanted to be free. To run. To howl. To fuck.

Okay, where the hell did that thought come from?

But it was true. I felt alive, on fire, and that tug began in my chest again. Not toward the moon, but again directed toward the hunter.

I felt her then, something stirring inside me, waking, and stretching. I looked down, as if I could see into my body, which of course I couldn’t, just as something deep and primal yawned inside me.

“I . . .” I brought a hand to my belly. “I can feel her.”

Kaillen’s ragged breaths increased, and with the deft flick of his hands, his loose pants fell to the ground. A rich, musky aroma surrounded the hunter, and one glance southward revealed evidence that the dude was very turned on.

A pulse began low in my belly, not related to my wolf or my magic, but to the hunter. I ached to touch him, caress him, kiss him. His large cock called to me, begging me to drop to my knees, to wrap my mouth around him, and suck his rigid length.

He groaned. “I can scent your sex. Your arousal—” He paused. “Fuck, Tala.”

And since it was the night of following instincts, I didn’t question it. I dropped to the ground and pulled him toward me. He came readily, his large erection spearing the night.

In a blurred move, I had my hand wrapped around the base of his shaft and the head of his dick in my mouth. Gods, I’d wanted to taste him and feel him for so long.

A guttural groan came from him as I began sucking his cock fast and hard. I needed this, needed him, and I had no idea why. So I sucked and licked, bit and fondled. I couldn’t get enough of his taste, his scent, his feel.

“Fuck, Tala.” He strained against me, his hands fisting my hair. “I can’t stop it. Your mouth—”

A deep, primal roar tore from his throat. His knees bent as he came fast and hard. His bellow stretched across the meadows and up to the stars. His entire body shook as his orgasm pulsed through his thick erection and his hot cum flooded my mouth.

I drank down every drop as his orgasm went on and on. I loved it. Loved every second of it as his cock stayed buried deep in my mouth and my newly emerging wolf side relished the taste and scent of him.

And when he finally finished coming, when his claw-like hands at last released my hair, I stood as sweat glistened along my body and the pulsing ache in my core abated. I was still turned on, still aroused, but making the hunter climax had calmed some part deep inside me. Some part of me that was being born.

The hunter’s eyes glowed a savage gold when I met his gaze. In a blurred movement, he had me in his arms and his mouth on mine.

He kissed me deeply, his arms like steel as he held me tenderly, yet with so much force that I knew he’d never let me go. There was a primal longing to his kiss, as though he were claiming me right then and there, and demanding that I be his.

When he finally pulled back, his harsh breaths clouded in a fog in the cold air around us. I smiled, then licked my lips as I savored his taste.

He cupped my cheek, his thumb trailing along my lower lip, as his chest rose and fell unsteadily. So many emotions were pouring off of him right now. So many emotional scents that I couldn’t yet identify. “You have no idea how long I’ve dreamed of you doing that.”

But I didn’t reply, because the moon was calling to me again. I turned to face it, my chin tilting up as that heated feeling grew within me. Kaillen’s hands stayed on my waist, his touch fierce and possessive. He stepped closer until his chest brushed against my back as his grip stayed firm on my hips. Mine. He didn’t have to say the word aloud, but I knew that was what he was feeling.

Because, strangely, a similar feeling was growing in me.

“She’s getting stronger,” I murmured.

“Let it happen,” he rasped. “Don’t fight her.”

I gulped as the itching began in my chest again, growing and heating as the moon rose steadily in the sky, higher and higher as my wolf began to circle and pace within me.

“I can really feel her,” I whispered as my eyes flashed wide open.

Another consciousness came to life inside me, another mind caressing my own. Yet hers wasn’t human. I didn’t detect language. I didn’t talk to her or introduce myself. All I sensed were emotions and the presence of something else.

Inside, I tentatively reached for her, as if I were extending a hand in her direction, toward that heated darkness, because I wanted to touch her and greet her. I was doing as Kaillen advised, letting my instincts guide the way and not trying to fight her.

She shifted forward in the darkness until I felt her draw near. I gasped, my consciousness still turned inward, and I could have sworn that I felt her soft fur meet my palm, like a caress and a tentative hello in return.

“Do you sense her?” Kaillen asked.

“Yes,” I breathed. I’d had no idea that this moment would be so magical. “She’s inside me. She senses me too.”

“It’s almost time then.”

I knew he was right. The throbbing began in my chest again as the tingle and pulse of blazing, foreign-feeling magic spread through my veins. But it wasn’t Kaillen’s magic. I wasn’t pulling on him with my awakening power. No, this was new magic, her magic. It was my werewolf powers coming to light.

The moon was so high now, nearly at its apex, and more than anything I wanted to run and howl at that beautiful glowing orb that shone as bright as snow.

“Tala?” The hunter shifted closer to me, his hand brushing down to caress my thigh.

My wolf whined softly inside me, the first sound she’d made. I startled. Inside, she nudged me, trying to get me to shift my attention to Kaillen. When I apparently wasn’t moving fast enough, she whined again, her body straining, her entity wanting to be free. To be free with the hunter.

No, with the hunter’s wolf.

“Kaillen, I think she’s trying to—” She slammed against my insides. I cried out as an explosive burst of magic skated along my skin, scorched my nerves, and ignited my senses.

Heat consumed me as I fell through a void of time and space. The cataclysmic feeling of my body shifting and breaking and awakening into something else happened all at once.

I fell inward. Down, down, down. And then I was looking through eyes closer to the ground. As the cold wind ruffled the fur on my body, sharp scents rolled into my senses, and the urge to run and play, nearly overwhelmed me.

A flash of power came to my right, and then another wolf stood at my side. So much bigger and so powerful. His beautiful russet-colored fur intermixed with dark-gray, cream, and black. The bleed of colors shone in the moonlight.