Extending someone this gift wasn’t something we did often, but the woman’s choice had been torn from her.

As had her carotid.

I gnawed my bottom lip as I peered around the back of the tent. We were in the area that was for the workers. People wandered around from stall to stall, buying snacks here, playing a game there, but it was all happening at the front, not the back.

Even as I wondered why the carnival worker hadn’t come out from her stall to see what was going on, because there must have been a helluva racket, I heard noises coming from within—a hushing sound, a soft giggle, some moans.

Whoever was in there was making out with someone.

My brow furrowed at that, but who was I to question someone’s inability to hear another person having their throat ripped out while they were doing the nasty?

Even though the candy stall worker was evidently busy, I could hear movement coming from the stand behind us.

I reached down, grabbed my brother’s shoulder, and muttered, “Someone’s coming out.”

“I hear them,” he replied, his tone as loaded with urgency as mine was.

Though this wasn’t our mess, it was our pack’s, and we were duty bound to help the female. Of course, that went beyond just our duty to the pack. It was basic human decency.

If this was any other night, if this was any other time of the month, she’d have just perished and there wouldn’t have been a damn thing we could do to save her.

But it wasn’t just any other night.

It was a full moon. The second full moon in the month, which meant it was a blue moon, which… crap. That was the only time you could turn a human into a shifter with an alpha’s bite. An alpha I couldn’t even scent thanks to all the detritus in the area. Dammit to hell!

The motives behind this attack were beyond questionable. Why go to the extent of converting someone, if you didn’t give a damn about them? Why leave them to drain out on their own? The woman had to be terrified, and the fear I saw in her eyes was only a fraction of the outright horror I knew she had to be feeling inside.

Crouching down and trying not to wince as I heard the odd little sounds that came from her throat where air escaped—I wasn’t exactly squeamish, but even that made my stomach churn—I reached over and rubbed my fingers over her bloody forehead.

“All will be well, sweetheart.”

Her eyes fluttered wider, transmitting more of her fear. She rocked her head to the side, barely moving a scant inch before she conceded defeat and stopped moving period, the pain evidently too much.

“You’re not going to die,” I crooned, trying to ease her pain, her discomfort. She didn’t understand, couldn’t and wouldn’t until it happened, and when it did, she needed to be far from here. “We have to move you,” I whispered. “We have to give you some breathing room.” Away from other humans.

I didn’t say that last part, didn’t want her to be even more scared than she’d been before. Because the last thing I needed her to know was that the second she shifted, every single person in the vicinity was under threat.

That first shift was a bastard.

The wolf wanted blood, meat. It was like the human side needed vengeance for what it had been through when its body transformed.

After that initial attack, after the ‘sacrifice’ was found and both wolf and human were at peace, they’d pass out for days. Sometimes even a week.

In both cases, they needed to be watched over.

Needed to be shielded.

When I shuffled the small woman into my arms, Austin was at my side, helping me get her comfortable without causing her more pain than strictly necessary. I winced, hearing more of the faint grunts that were just loaded with her agony.

Guilt filled me, but I shoved it aside. This was for her own benefit.

When she’d bled out fully, that was when she’d transform, and I could tell from her sluggish breaths and the dull throb of her heart that the pivotal moment was upon us.

With her now in my arms, Austin and I took off at a fast pace. Faster than a human would ever be able to compete with, faster even than some might be able to register, but we had no choice. Just running in this manner put us in danger of exposure, but what alternative did we have?

We were in a carnival, for God’s sake.

The last place a rabid, newly transformed wolf needed to be was around so many people. So many scents, so much…

Dear Mother, just thinking about it broke me out in a sweat more than the run itself did.

As we raced away from the commons where the carnival was being held, we veered onto pack territory. The pack actually owned most of Highbanks, everything from Main Street out into the other five major avenues in the shopping district. Only a few acres didn’t belong to us, and they were farms that had been managed by the same human families for centuries.

As for the rest, it was ours, just the pack’s, so running into a forest that belonged to us wasn’t a big ask, but finding something that the wolf wouldn’t consider prey was another matter entirely.

My senses were loaded down with the scent of her blood. My nose was clogged with it, and all I could hear was her dying breaths. I didn’t have it in me to scan for any stags that might be in the vicinity, nor did I have it in me to wonder if there were any other kinds of smaller beasts that might suit the ravenous hunger that was about to overtake the small female.

Wincing at the thought, I rushed through hundreds of trees, ignoring the scraping of branches and the loam underfoot that was crumpled by our weight. We registered the smaller prey—rabbits and the like—who popped out of their burrows to see who and what was making all the noise, but they dove back under the second they scented what we truly were.

Only when we were deep in the forest, surrounded by thousands of trees on all sides, did we slow to a halt. As always, Austin and I were on the same track. We were twins, and twin shifters that were born, not transformed, always had a more unusual connection than most could even begin to comprehend.

He was my other half.

The other part of me.

Sure, we had our own thoughts, opinions, and autonomous responses, but where things of this nature came into play? It was like two minds working as one.

Because fall was approaching, the trees were turning. The leaves were dying, and the branches were sparser than they would have been just three weeks ago. Through those bare canopies, I could see the night sky, the blue moon’s glow hitting us.

Carefully, I placed the woman on the ground.

She barely weighed anything, and that had nothing to do with my strength either. She wasn’t a good candidate for a shifter, and that added to my concern. Not only were we helping her without aid from the pack, but we were going into this without her being strong enough for the change.

It would be so easy to shift, to call on our brethren, but if we did that, we might trigger the awakening wolf inside the strange female, and that was the last thing we could afford. The creature was already going to awaken furious and starving, but if we cornered it too? If it awoke fearing for its safety? We were beyond screwed.

Eli

The moon had a potent scent that night. It was always that way when it was a blue moon.

Blue moons were iconic in all facets of human culture, but to the supernaturals? Blue moons were magical beyond a non-supe’s comprehension. They were moments of power and spirituality, which I experienced more than most as alpha of my pack.