Blind Wolf (A Werewolf BBW Shifter Romance #1)(21)

"He'll be okay. I need to wash this off," he said, stumbling toward the water. Yes, water. He would be able to drink, to cool off. He would be able to forget. The steps toward the lake's edge took forever, and Julia followed him at a distance, the fear still coming off of her in intense bursts of emotion. He could almost see the fight now through her thoughts, the vision of two wolves floating through his mind. Two wolves snarling, biting, then blood, blood—

He dropped onto his knees into ankle-deep water at the lake's edge and splashed his face. When the blood finally stopped overpowering his sense of smell, he turned back to Julia.

"What the hell was that?" she asked.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Julia

Julia kept an eye on the wounded wolf, but it soon became apparent that the animal was too wounded to walk anywhere, let alone attack again. She thought it would die for certain.

Keeping her attention half on the wolf, she followed Damien to the edge of the water and watched as he washed himself clean. The water around him turned pink with blood but that soon disappeared. Still he washed, splashing his hair with water, until there was no trace left. Questions thrashed through Julia's mind and she could not help but blurt out the first thing that came into her head when Damien turned to her, still nak*d.

""What the hell was that?"

"The fight?" Damien asked. She noticed now that his leg was bleeding, but he did not seem to care.

"Did I—was that real? Did I hallucinate that?" She half-hoped that she was crazy instead of...whatever that was.

"It was real," Damien said. "Can I have my swimsuit?"

Julia breathed steadily, walking back to where the suit had dropped from his body. She made sure to circle widely around the injured wolf, just in case. Damien waited patiently and held his hand out to take the swimsuit from her. She dropped it into his hand without letting their fingers touch. He pulled on the suit, unembarrassed, but when he turned to her, she saw the light flashing from his golden eyes.

"Who are you?" she asked. She'd been scared before, but now that Damien was staring directly at her, blindly, she was completely unnerved. "What are you?

"I told you, I have a genetic condition. I can shift...change into my other form," he said.

"Into a wolf."

"Yes."

"You're a werewolf." Julia couldn't believe this.

"Sort of," Damien said. "Yes. Not like in the stories."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"I don't, like, eat humans. I don't shift when there's a full moon. Nothing like that."

"I'm going insane," Julia said. She sat down on the sandy shore of the lake, her head in her hands. Either she was crazy or Damien was. And she didn't want to think about either option seriously.

"You're not insane. I'm sorry." He walked over and sat next to her in the sand. Her eyes tracked his every movement and when he grazed her with his arm as he sat down, she flinched.

"I scare you," he said. His voice and face were clear: he was miserable. Julia felt sorry for him, in a strange way.

"It's okay," she said quietly. "Really, it is."

"I shouldn't have shifted like that in front of you. I know you were scared."

"You have no idea," she said, shaking her head. "This whole thing is impossible."

"I'm sorry, Julia. I wanted to tell you in a different way, I swear," he said.

"The girl you're with," Julia said, suddenly. "The one who was guiding you. Is she..."

"She's a shifter too."

"That's what you call them? Not werewolves?"

"Right," Damien said.

"So she's in your...your pack?

"Yes." He paused, his expression pained. "I should tell you—I want to be completely honest. I can't lie to you anymore."

"What is it?" Julia asked, her voice a whisper.

"She's the one I'm supposed to mate with."

Julia swallowed back a sob. She knew. She supposed she had always known, ever since the beginning. He couldn't be hers. Nobody like him could ever really be hers. The girl he had been with was beautiful, gorgeous even. Thin and sexy and everything that Julia wasn't.

"Okay," she stammered. She started to get up and Damien's hand clasped down hard on her wrist.

"Wait. Don't leave," Damien said.

"What do you want from me?" Julia said. She was on her knees in the sand, facing his golden, sightless eyes. They glimmered, or was that the sun? It didn't matter. His beautiful eyes, his beautiful face—none of it belonged to her. "You're a liar. You've lied to me since the moment I met you!"

"Julia, how could I have told you the truth? You wouldn't have believed me."

"You could have told me about her," Julia said. "You could have told me that you belonged to somebody else from the start. Instead you fed me all this bullshit about being lovely. Calling me sexy, saying you wanted to take me out on a date."

"Julia—"

"No! You can't just do that!" Julia was furious now, and her cheeks again were wet with tears—when had that happened? She yanked her arm out of Damien's grasp and wiped her face as she stood up. "You made me fall in love with you and you knew all the while it was impossible!"