Charmed Wolf

lunging for his jugular, proof that I considered him an actual threat.
And he submitted...or seemed to. But as I turned away, something dark flitted through my peripheral vision.
“Look out!” Kale’s voice rose to the pitch of a girlish shriek.
And even though I knew the kid was safe beside Willa, I turned toward him. After all, Natalie had put her children in my care. Kale’s safety was my top priority.
Sure enough, the kid was fine. Just pointing wildly toward my blind spot.
Before I could swivel back to face the danger, something hard barreled into my shoulder. Together, Ash and I went down.
THE MOVE HAD BEEN SNEAKY, not what I’d expected during an official challenge. Not what I’d expected from an unofficial friend either.
Still, it was nothing I couldn’t deal with. I let Ash’s momentum push me into a roll. For a split second, my belly lay exposed between us. But before he could pounce, I was back upright. Feet clawed grass. Then my teeth bit into his skin.
Up until this point, I’d drawn little blood. Just enough to give wolves the feeling they’d been taking part in more than a training session. Now, though, I didn’t hold back. My fangs grated against Ash’s cheekbone. Deeper. Harder.
He still didn’t stand down.
I had just enough spare energy to send a quick order to Willa down the pack bond. “Get Kale out of here.” Because while earlier tussles hadn’t risked sparking a twelve-year-old human’s nightmares, what was about to happen might.
“Leave me alone!” Kale cried, but this time I didn’t allow myself to be distracted. Instead, I bit down harder on Ash’s face. Already, the wound I’d made would leave a scar. More risked breaking bones to the point of disfigurement.
“This isn’t appropriate bedtime entertainment,” Willa growled behind me. “How about a cookie?”
She was worse than I was with children. I would have laughed if Kale had been anything other than my favorite mini-human. I would have laughed if causing so much pain to a friend wasn’t making me sick.
Beneath me, Ash didn’t whimper but he did relax. Not quite a submission, but the next best thing to one.
Did he really think I was about to fall for the same trick twice?
Still, I didn’t want to break his jaw if I didn’t have to. Releasing him, I took one stiff-legged step backwards. Meanwhile, behind me, the debate between Kale and Willa twisted and turned sour.
“I’m not a child,” Kale countered. “If I was a wolf, I’d be nearly old enough to shift. Then you wouldn’t send me away from here.”
“But you’re not a wolf, are you?” Willa’s words dripped with condescension. Kale sucked in a breath that almost sounded like a sob.
“The Alpha,” Willa continued, “said it’s time for you to go.”
“Tara didn’t say anything!”
“You will call her Alpha.”
Willa’s growl was twice as threatening as Ash’s posture. Beneath me, my opponent lay still as a stone.
But he wasn’t done. His muscles were coiled. And, as we’d learned during sparring matches, his bulk considerably outmatched mine.
If he managed to find his way onto my back, I’d be the one at a disadvantage....
I shook my head, focusing on the present. I was willing to take that risk to shut down the conversation between my buddy and my Beta before it spiraled all the way out of control. Before the fight between me and Ash descended into cascades of blood no twelve-year-old should see.
So I risked taking my eyes off my opponent. Lunging toward Kale, I communicated in the only way I could with an errant human. I bared my teeth and I snapped.
The kid jumped backward as fast as a rabbit. “Tara...Alpha.”
His voice was a whimper. I’d always acted more like a pet dog than a scary wolf in his presence. I’d wanted him to trust me, not to react with fear.
I growled anyway. And he must have thought that growl was an agreement with Willa, a dismissal of his young adulthood. Because his face folded. The same way it did when his dad got busy and forgot to pick him up for the weekend. The same way it did when kids from his old school used his dead name.
I froze for a split second, hating that I’d broken the bond I’d worked so hard to build with Natalie’s son. Froze and watched him follow Willa away into the darkness.
A rush of air warned me one split second before Ash landed on my back.

Chapter 6
The boulder at the edge of the clearing. Ash must have clambered atop it while I was dealing with Kale. There’d been half a dozen wolves up there watching, though. Shouldn’t one of them have warned me about impending attack?
No matter. Ash was on top of me now, his fangs cutting into the thick skin at my ruff. He was going for my jugular, but it would take a lot of mouthing to work his way around my neck and get there.
And I wasn’t waiting. With Kale gone, I didn’t have to hold back any longer. And even though Ash had the literal upper hand—upper paw?—I was far from vanquished.
Because my opponent spent too much of his time human. Like most who practiced primarily on two legs, he’d decided to focus on expanding his right side’s skills at the expense of the other.
In contrast, wolves were ambidextrous. As Alpha, I’d spent days learning to work my left paws as well as my right.
So I twisted my neck until it ached, going for Ash’s left armpit. A well-trained wolf would have been able to block me. But Ash just scratched feebly, unskillful with his off side. In his efforts to free himself, his hold on my neck slipped.
And that was my cue. Lunging sideways, I pulled Ash into a roll along with me. Brittle flower stems crushed as we thrashed our way out of the official challenge clearing and into the forest.
I’d taken pains not to leave the grassy sward previously. No wonder a root stretched beneath