Change For Me (Werewolf Romance) (The Alpha's Kiss) Read Free Page B

with me if it required talking about subjects deeper than motorcycle repair.
    “Soul mates,” he said absently then shook his head.
    “What?” I said. “Soul mates? What are you talking about?”
    Grandpa coughed into his hand. “Well, you wanted a new story, huh? So here’s one. Wolves, they’ve all got spirit mates. Soul mates, fated lovers, whatever you want to call it. You can see them picking one another. In the pack, the alpha, he picks his mate, right?”
    I nodded, not sure where the story was going.
    “What you don’t know, and what they don’t say on those nature documentaries you watch all the time, is that they have souls. Their souls speak to each other. It isn’t random chance, or the result of a fight or anything as simple as that.” He lit his pipe again, and took another long draw before setting it down and letting it go out. “They search. Those ones that live on the bluffs, you call them werewolves, but that’s not... anyway, they search for their mates. The whole pack goes from place to place as the alpha looks for his mate.”
    “I’m sorry,” I said with a laugh. “Did you say werewolves? Those aren’t real. They’re monsters in books, movies, whatever. They’re not...”
    “Nineteen years old and knows the world, this one.” There was a hint of a tease in his voice. “They’re not werewolves. That whole business about the full moon and all that, you’re right, it’s a bunch of hogwash. But there’s something out there, and they’re certainly real. Huge men who run in packs, turning back and forth between wolf and man,” he tapped his fingernail on the side of his pipe bowl and trailed off.
    “Oh, one other thing I forgot,” he said, startling me. “They get caught. Sort of, er, stuck.”
    A look of disbelief crossed my face, and a chill down my back got me to pull my knees tighter against my chest. “Stuck?”
    “Yeah, halfway. Partly transformed. I don’t know, it never made much sense to me, and I’ve never seen one in such a state, but –”
    “Seen one?” I said. “You’ve seen these things?”
    “Never a stuck one, no. But those wolves we see sometimes? Ever wondered why they come through and then vanish? They’re looking for a mate. One of them’s looking for his soul mate.”
    “This sounds like some kind of weird destiny-prophecy stuff.”
    Grandpa reached across the table and smiled, patting my hand. “I’m old,” he said. “I’m sentimental. I’m sure it’s probably nothing.”
    But that wasn’t what the look on his face said, not at all.
    Almost on cue, a howling wind swept across our little stretch of land, kicking up a dust cloud some thirty yards away. It had a bite to it, but summer was setting in, and the desert nights stopped cooling off so much. I stared off in the distance where he pointed. The lingering, relaxing smell of his smoke followed my grandpa inside. The screen closed behind him with a long squeaking sound, then a clatter of metal on metal.
    I swept my eyes from east to west, squinting. By then, full darkness had descended. Another wind swung through, gusting then breathing softly, putting the towering radio antenna on top of the hand-built house to a gentle sway.
    Judging from the speed with which the wind came in, a storm was probably coming. Whenever it rains out here, it’s strange. We go so long without any that the ground gets too hard for the water to soak in very much, so it pounds off the cracked dirt, then pools up for a time and if there’s any left in the morning, it evaporates before it can do much. That’s storms anyway. Long, slow, patient rains, they make the desert come to life for a few short days.
    “Where are you?” I said into the darkness. “Shouldn’t you be here by now?” My gaze fell on the spire-like plateau that grandpa pointed out as his words replayed in my mind.
    There was something about it, how Carey’s Bluff just stuck out of the ground, defiant and proud. Then again, it was just