The Monster I Made

MORENA POV

Left jab. Slip the hook. Pivot on the ball of the foot, and drive the right cross straight into the ribs.

Sweat stings my eyes as my sixteen-ounce leather glove slams into Cole's body with a wet, heavy thud that echoes across the packed gym. The air inside the River Ash Boxing Club smells like stale sweat, canvas, and the liniment oil they rub into our shoulders before a match.

Around the outside of the ropes, thirty wolves in workout gear are shouting, their voices bouncing off the corrugated tin roof.

I'm twenty years old, five-foot-five, and the undefeated pound-for-pound rising boxer of my generation in River Ash. In the ring, nobody in the under-twenty-five bracket can touch my speed.

Except the woman standing outside my corner isn't smiling.

Grace Matheson-River Ash Elder, sworn executioner, and my mother-watches me from the apron with her arms folded over her black uniform, her storm-gray eyes narrowed in open dissatisfaction. I've won nineteen straight bouts this year, and I still haven't earned so much as a nod from her.

"Stop dancing on the outside like a point-fighter, Morena!" my mother's voice cuts cleanly through the noise of the crowd. "If you can't break his guard before the bell, you're running the southern perimeter in the dark tonight!"

Damn it. My lungs burn as I bounce back out of Cole's reach, keeping my chin tucked behind my left shoulder.

To the human town outside, this gym is just a local youth boxing club where blue-collar kids train for Golden Gloves. To the River Ash Clan, the ring is our monthly Control Assessment. Living peacefully among humans means keeping the wolf locked down, and there is no better test of discipline than taking a punch to the face under bright lights without letting your fangs drop or your claws rip through your leather gloves.

"Heard your mom, Matheson," Cole sneers from across the canvas, spitting blood into his mouthguard. He's got forty pounds of muscle on me and a bruised ego from losing the regional qualifiers to me last month. "Guess that pretty footwork isn't impressing the Executioner today."

"Keep talking with your chin up, Cole. See what happens."

He charges, throwing a wild, heavy overhand right meant to take my head off.

I can tell the exact second he loses his temper, because his yellow wolf eyes flare and the seams of his right glove bulge as his claws start shifting inside the padding. Foul. If he cuts me with shifted claws, the referee will disqualify him, and my mother will put him on kennel duty for a month.

I don't wait for the ref.

I duck under his swinging arm, feeling the wind of his glove brush my braided hair, and step dead inside his stance. Weight on my back foot. Rotate the hip.

I drive a vicious left hook straight into his liver, followed half a heartbeat later by a short, snapping right uppercut to the point of his chin.

Cole's head snaps back. His knees unplug completely, and all two hundred pounds of him hit the canvas flat on his back before the three-minute bell even rings.

The gym erupts in cheers.

"Winner by knockout!" the ref calls, waving the match off as Cole groans on the mat.

I let out a long breath, rolling my aching right wrist inside my wraps as I walk to my corner and duck through the ropes. I didn't let my wolf slip once. My heart rate is already dropping, my footwork was clean, and I took down a heavier fighter in under two rounds.

My mother doesn't even offer me a water bottle.

"You hesitated on the counterpunch," Grace says coldly, picking up her clipboard from the ring apron. "You're too attached to the rules of that ring, Morena. A boxer fights for a ten-count. An enforcer of River Ash fights to end a threat permanently. Until you stop treating combat like a sport, you aren't ready for the inner guard."

My jaw tightens until my back teeth ache. "You told me the assessment was about control. I kept my control."

"You played it safe," she corrects without looking up.

"Clean yourself up. You have the dusk border run along the southern creek at seven. Do not be late."

She turns on her heel and walks toward the front office, where I can already hear the warm, cheerful voice of Betty Monroe-my best friend's completely human mother, delivering a basket of peaches from the market. Watching my mother soften her posture and smile for a human woman who has no idea Grace executes rogue wolves for a living is a whiplash I will never get used to.

Shoving my frustration down, I push through the heavy door into the back equipment alley, yanking my headgear off, and stop dead.

Bass Monroe is sitting on an upturned wooden crate by the locker room steps, a bag of crushed ice in one hand and a pair of bandage scissors in the other. He's twenty-one, six feet of broad shoulders in a faded blue flannel, with messy dark curls and the calm, steady brown eyes that have anchored me since we were fourteen.

"Saw Cole get carried out," Bass says, a slow grin curving his mouth as he stands. Without asking, he unlaces my gloves, slides them off, and carefully snips the sweat-soaked cotton wraps from my bruised knuckles. His large, rough fingers brush my palm, sending a jolt straight up my arm that has nothing to do with boxing. "Your left hook is getting mean, champ."

"Not mean enough for Grace," I mutter, though my chest loosens the second he presses the cold ice pack over my knuckles, his thumb lingering against my pulse. Lately, standing this close to him makes it hard to breathe.

"Your mom's blind," Bass murmurs, his gaze dropping to my mouth for a fraction of a second before he steps back.

"Come on. I'll give you a ride out to the southern creek before you start your patrol."

By seven o'clock, the sun has dropped behind the western ridge, dragging deep shadows across the rushing water of the southern creek.

I walk the mossy gravel bank beside Bass's parked pickup truck, rolling my sore shoulders under my jacket. My knuckles still throb from Cole's chin, and two rounds of heavy sparring have left my legs heavier than usual, but this stretch of the boundary line is supposed to be dead quiet.

"Look, I'm just saying, if you go to the state tournament in the fall, I'm sitting front row," Bass says, leaning against his rusted tailgate with a heavy iron tire wrench in his hand from fixing his spare wheel.

"My mother will lock me in the cellar before she lets me box on television," I say, a small laugh escaping me as I turn to face him. "The whole point of the clan living among humans is staying invisible, Bass."

"Yeah, well, nothing about you is invisible to me," he says softly.

My heart stumbles against my ribs. The teasing humor in his eyes is gone, replaced by something quiet and intense that makes the three feet of space between us feel like nothing at all.

MORENA POV

"Bass-"

The forest goes dead silent.

Every hair on my arms stands straight up.

I inhale sharply through my nose, and my stomach drops. Beneath the smell of pine needles and river water, a rank, stench slices through the evening air. Rotting fur. Rabid sweat. And old, dried blood.

"Get in the truck," I hiss, my weight dropping instantly into a fighter's stance as I shove Bass toward the cab.

"What is it?" Bass's hand tightens on the iron wrench.

"Bass, get in the damn truck now-"

The brush twenty feet upstream explodes.

A rogue wolf the size of a black bear launches out of the ferns at a dead sprint. Its coat is mangy and scarred, its eyes bloodshot and rabid, foam dripping from its jaws as it locks straight onto us.

I don't have time to shift fully-not with Bass right behind me and the beast already airborne.

"Run!" I shout, and step forward to intercept it.

Two hundred pounds of feral muscle slam into my chest, knocking us both into the shallow stones of the creek bank. I roll with the impact the way I was trained on the mats, kicking the beast off me and scrambling to my feet.

The rogue lunges again, jaws snapping at my throat.

Instinct takes over. I slip its snapping teeth by an inch, just like slipping a wide right hook in the ring pivot on my left heel, and drive a full-force, clawed right cross into the side of its snout.

Bone cracks under my bare knuckles, but my mother's cold voice rings horribly true in my head: A boxer fights for a ten-count. A beast doesn't care about points.

My bruised right wrist buckles from the strain of the earlier match. Before I can reset my guard, the rogue swings its massive front paw and slams me sideways into the fender of the pickup truck.

Steel dents behind my spine. The air rips clean out of my lungs, and I hit the gravel on my knees, gasping for breath.

The rogue doesn't pause. It lowers its bloody snout and charges straight for my exposed neck.

Before I can raise my arms, boots crunch on the stones and a tall shadow steps right over me.

"Hey!" Bass roars.

Terror turns my blood to ice.

Bass swings the heavy iron tire wrench with both hands, slamming it across the rogue's skull with a deafening clang. The beast yelps, staggering sideways-and then whirls on Bass.

"Bass, no!" I scream, trying to force my legs under me.

Bass raises the iron bar again, but he's human-he can't match the speed of a shifted wolf. The rogue bowls straight into his chest, knocking him flat onto the rocks, and rakes its claws viciously down his shoulder, ripping through his blue flannel shirt in a hot spray of red.

Bass's blood.

The scent hits the back of my throat, and every ounce of boxer's discipline inside my head shatters into dust.

There are no ropes here. There are no rules. There is only the boy I have loved since I was fourteen bleeding on the stones.

A feral snarl rips out of my chest. My vision drowns in blinding, violent red as my wolf takes the wheel completely. I launch myself across the gravel, slamming onto the rogue's back, hook my left arm under its jaw, and wrench its head back with every shred of supernatural strength in my body while my teeth and claws tear into its throat until the spine snaps.

The rogue convulses once and collapses dead in the mud.

I can't stop. My chest is heaving, my pulse hammering like war drums in my ears, the red haze blinding me to everything except the screaming instinct in my blood. Kill. Protect. Tear it apart before it touches him again.

Footsteps stumble on the rocks behind me.

Two large, warm hands grab my trembling shoulders from behind, trying to haul me back from the corpse.

"Morena! Morena, stop, it's over-look at me-"

My brain doesn't register human words. My wolf only feels hands grabbing my neck while I'm drowning in bloodlust.

Three seconds.

That's all it takes to destroy everything.

One second to whirl around with a vicious snarl.

Two seconds to slam my attacker back against the side of the truck.

Three seconds to sink my fangs deep into the warm, pulsing side of his neck.

A ragged gasp breaks against my ear.

The hands on my shoulders don't punch me. They don't shove me off. Instead, familiar, trembling fingers slide up into my hair, holding the back of my head gently even as hot human blood fills my mouth.

"Morena..."

Bass's whisper slices straight through the red haze.

My eyes snap wide. I wrench my mouth back with a strangled cry, stumbling away on the wet stones as my hands fly to my bloodstained lips.

Slumped against the dented truck door, one hand pressed over his torn throat and blood soaking his flannel shirt, is Bass.

My stomach heaves as the truth hits me like a fist to the ribs. I didn't just break the deadliest law of River Ash.

I just bit the boy I love-and when his hand slips an inch from his neck in the dim light, the torn flesh beneath his fingers isn't bleeding out.

It's already sealing itself shut.

MORENA POV

My knees hit the wet gravel of the creek bank, my stomach heaving as I stare at the blood on Bass's shirt.

I bit him.

I survived two brutal rounds in the ring with Cole without letting my wolf slip once, only to lose my head for three seconds in the dark and sink my teeth into my best friend's throat.

"Morena." Bass drops to one knee in front of me, his left hand clamped over his neck while his right grabs my shoulder. "Hey. Look at me."

"Get back!" I choke out, scrambling backward until my spine hits the rear tire of his truck. My heart is hammering against my ribs so hard I can barely breathe. "Bass, I tore your neck open! We have to get you to the clan infirmary-"

"Are you insane?" Bass grips the front of my jacket and gives me a single, sharp shake. "You walk me into River Ash with your bite mark on my neck, and your mother will take your head off before sunrise."

"I don't care what Grace does to me if you bleed out!"

"I'm not bleeding out." Bass pulls his hand away from his collar and tilts his chin up in the dim light. "Look."

I freeze.

Beneath the smear of drying red on his tan skin, the deep puncture wounds where my fangs sank in are gone. The torn flesh has already knitted itself shut, leaving nothing behind except a faint, dark crescent scar.

"That's not possible," I whisper, the air rushing out of my lungs. Even an Elder wolf takes two days to heal a throat wound. Humans don't heal at all. "Bass, what the hell just happened to your skin?"

"We can figure that out when we aren't standing next to a dead wolf," Bass says grimly, glancing toward the mangled rogue lying ten feet away. "How long until the next perimeter patrol passes this sector?"

My boxer's brain automatically checks the clock. "Ten minutes. Cole's cousin has the northern loop. If the wind shifts, he'll smell the blood."

Bass doesn't waste a second. He walks over, grabs the two-hundred-pound dead rogue by the scruff of its neck with one hand, and hurls the carcass six feet into the hollowed-out roots under the bank.

I blink. That wolf weighs as much as a heavyweight fighter, and Bass just tossed it like an empty gym bag.

Before I can ask how the hell he just did that, Bass stumbles, catching himself against the side of the truck bed as a violent shudder rips through his broad frame.

Sweat is pouring down his temples despite the cold night air.

"Keys are in the ignition," he rasps, yanking the passenger door open. "Take the back dirt road to my house. My mom's at her sewing circle until nine."

I don't argue. I jump behind the wheel, kill the headlights, and spin the tires out onto the logging trail.

Across the cab, Bass is burning up. I can feel the heat radiating off his body from two feet away, like sitting next to a furnace. He squeezes his eyes shut, his right hand white-knuckling the plastic grab-handle above the passenger door.

"Bass, talk to me," I say, pressing the gas pedal to the floor.

"The turn fever isn't supposed to start for hours-"

"It's not a fever," he grits out through clenched teeth.

"Everything is just-too loud-"

Crack.

The heavy molded plastic of the grab-handle snaps clean in half inside his fist.

Bass stares at the broken piece of plastic in his palm, then drops it to the floorboard. Neither of us says a word. My stomach plummets straight into my boots.

I cut the engine behind the apple trees at the back of the Monroe property, jump out, and help Bass stumble into his old wooden tool shed.

The second I slide the iron bolt shut and pull the chain on the overhead bulb, Bass doubles over against the oak workbench.

"Take your shirt off," I ordered, grabbing a canteen of water and a clean rag from the shelf. "Let me see where that rogue clawed your shoulder."

Bass strips the ruined blue flannel over his head and tosses it aside.

I stop dead, the wet rag dripping onto my boots.

Four deep claw trenches should be carved across his right shoulder. Instead, his muscular back and chest are completely unbroken. Not a cut. Not even a pink scratch.

Except something else is moving under his skin.

Right over his collarbone, climbing up toward the crescent scar of my bite mark, his veins are bulging-black as tar and shot through with streaks of burning, molten gold.

"Bass..." I step forward, fear tightening my throat.

A low, agonizing groan rips out of his chest. His knees buckle, and he slams both hands down onto the two-inch-thick oak workbench. The solid wood splinters beneath his fingertips like dry twigs.

"Make it stop," Bass gasps, his voice dropping an octave, vibrating with a dark, heavy tremor that makes the saws on the wall rattle against their hooks. He presses the heels of his hands against his temples, his chest heaving. "Morena, my head-I can hear every car on the highway three miles out. I can hear dogs barking across town. And I'm seeing-God, I'm seeing fire."

"What fire?" I drop the rag and grab his forearms, trying to pull his hands away from his head. Touching him is like grabbing live electrical wire.

"A battlefield," he chokes out, his jaw clenching so hard his teeth grind. "Snow covered in blood. Wolves the size of horses tearing through a stone wall-and someone is screaming my name!"

Memories. He's seeing memories that don't belong to the twenty-one years he's lived in this town.

"Bass, listen to me!" I step right between his knees as he slumps against the workbench, cupping his burning face in both of my scarred, calloused hands. When I'm panicking between rounds in the ring, there's only one thing that brings my heart rate down, and I use it on him now. "Look at your corner. Eyes on me. Come on, sixty seconds on the clock. Breathe with me."

Bass's eyelids fly open.

My heart stops.

The warm, steady brown eyes I've loved since we were fourteen are gone. Blazing back at me is a ring of ancient, predatory gold and when his hands shoot up to grip my wrists, his fingers clamp down like iron shackles.

For two terrifying seconds, he doesn't look like he recognizes me. The thing staring out from behind his eyes isn't human, and it isn't a normal werewolf, either. It's older. Colder. Built for war.

"It's me," I whisper, refusing to flinch even as his grip bruises my bones. "It's Morena. Come back to me, Bass."

Slowly, painfully, his chest heaves. The violent gold in his eyes flickers, receding just a fraction as my Bass fights his way back to the surface, shoving the instinct down by sheer willpower.

He looks down at his large hands wrapped around my bruised wrists and snatches them back as if he's the one who got burned.

"Did I hurt you?" His voice breaks, raw with horror as he backs up against the tool wall, staring at his own trembling hands.

"Morena, what the hell is happening to me? Why am I seeing people getting slaughtered? Why did I want to-" He swallows hard, unable to finish the sentence.

"You didn't hurt me," I lie quickly, rubbing my aching wrists. "Whatever my bite did, it didn't turn you. It woke something up."

Before Bass can answer, tires crunch on the gravel driveway up by the main house.

Both of us freeze.

I don't need Bass's terrifying new hearing to recognize the heavy, measured thud of the second car door shutting, or the familiar voice talking to Betty Monroe on the front steps.

Grace. My mother is here.

"Bass? Honey, are you out back?" Betty's cheerful voice floats across the yard as the back porch light clicks on.

"Your truck's in the orchard! Grace walked me home from the market-she says they found a dead wolf down by the southern creek, so we're locking up early tonight!"

My blood turns to solid ice.

Through the dusty crack of the shed window, I see my mother standing on Betty's back porch, fifty feet away, wearing her black enforcer uniform with her hand resting on the silver executioner's blade at her belt.

Her head tilts slightly into the wind, her nostrils flaring as she scents the night air.

"Grace?" Betty asks innocently from the doorway. "Is something wrong?"

"No," my mother says softly, her storm-gray eyes locking straight onto the closed door of the tool shed. "Just thought I smelled blood."