The Innocent: Coming November 2! (Patreon)

Notes: Camille and Kyla are back! Or... they will be on November 2, when I start posting weekly chapters of my next book, The Innocent. Below is a preview of Chapter 1 so you can start getting as hyped as I am :D

The Innocent

The night air was cold and crisp. It froze in my lungs, cooling the heated blood in my veins and the burning in my muscles so I could keep pushing. Keep running. Each hot exhale I released swirled like a fog as I blew by it, as white in the moonlight as the lingering snow beneath my paws. But I wasn’t cold. My golden fur shielded me from the blast of icy winds as we shot through the woods, and Camille was running so close to my side that the length of her wolf body was pressed right against mine, and I could feel the heat pouring off of her.We were chasing a ghost, catching only glimpses of the white flashes through the trees, or disturbing what was left of its hovering clouds of breath. But we were gaining on it. We had been for the last few minutes, ever since Camille caught the scent in the still air, and tracked the paw prints to our prey’s hiding spot. We were getting close enough that the flashes of white were no longer indistinguishable from the snow, but a clear outline of wolf from head to tail.For every pace that put us closer, the blood connection I shared with Camille shared the spikes of building excitement that coursed through her. And each time I felt it, there was an answer of excitement in me. It echoed between us with every strike of our paws in the snow, until it reached a point where I could feel that Camille was ready to end this. Could feel a desire for the reward of the chase, an anticipation for it that had grown so strong it was ready to snap, and with that peak came a shift of action.Camille gathered a burst of strength and left my side, and I pushed through the burning in my limbs to match her stride for stride. We separated, using our speed to edge around our prey, until we were in line with the glimmer of white fur. It was Camille who’d caught the scent, Camille who’d tracked and gotten us this far, and now it was my turn. We closed in, dodging trees and getting so near to the wolf that I made out the whites of its hazel eyes.It was looking at me, knowing I’d be the one to pounce and go in for the take down, and I knew that it was scheming some way to avoid my attack. All I had to do was wait for an opening. I stared into its eyes through the rhythmic clouds of air it exhaled, keeping pace and cutting left or right when there was a tree in my path, but never removing my focus. Then it happened. The wolf glanced to its right to look at Camille on its other side, and I sprang.I left the ground, throwing myself at the wolf and landing right on its back, taking the scruff of its neck between my teeth. It was smaller than Camille and me, and it toppled under my weight so we went rolling in a clumsy heap through the snow. Our momentum was so great that we came to a stop only when we crashed into a tree, and a sharp pang shot through the side of my back as I hit. It caused me to release the grip of my teeth, and the wolf and I both recovered at the same time.We darted up, not wasting a moment before going back at each other in a tangle of fur. Teeth flashed and paws swiped as rumbling growls filled the air. I leapt and slashed and feigned, trying everything to throw my opponent off its feet and get my teeth on its neck, while trying to avoid the same. Camille was circling the sharp coil we’d become, surveying for the opportunity to dive in and help without making it harder for me to aim.Her opportunity came only a few seconds later. She dashed forward to snap her jaws around one of the white wolf’s hind legs and tugged. It pulled the wolf off balance and sent it crumbling, but Camille didn’t let go. She dragged the wolf backward instead, which kept it from regaining its feet for the brief span of time it took me to pounce. I went in from the left, stretching my mouth wide to set my teeth on either side of the wolf’s throat, and though everything went dead still and silent, I didn’t bite down for the kill. I angled my head to meet the wolf’s eyes, and it went limp beneath my hold as it let out a defeated growl. I let go, leaping backward in a triumphant prance as Camille jumped on the wolf to get in a few teasing bites of her own.The ghost was Luna, Camille’s fraternal twin sister. Sometimes Camille and I won the chase, sometimes she did, but the three of us had had plenty of runs like this since she’d moved to Oregon – plenty of nights tracking and chasing and play fighting in the woods that surrounded the Pack house, and here, too, in the woods around our school. This was our last night before the start of second semester, a semester Luna would stay for. She’d never admit she came here because she missed Camille, and Camille likely wouldn’t admit to being excited about it, but I could tell just by watching them struggle in the snow that they were glad to be together again.It didn’t take Luna long to battle Camille off of her and regain her feet, and while she shook out the ice crystals and scuffle from her fur, Camille came over to me. Her long, canine tongue swiped up the side of my face, and I ducked my head against her shoulder to return the affection. But I was still riled up and excited from the hunt, and couldn’t help a bit of mischief as I stretched forward to bite down on her hind leg. With it in my teeth, I pulled it out from under her and threw all my weight sideways, knocking her into the snow. I nudged her over onto her back, and she tried only halfheartedly to bat me away with her paws while I dipped in and out to nip at her neck and stomach.We messed around for a minute before I realized that Luna hadn’t interrupted yet, and looked over to find her was nursing a small wound where Camille had bitten down. When Camille realized it too, she pushed up to go and give her sister an apologetic nudge. Luna growled, side-eying Camille irritably while Camille bowed, her back half wagging in the air. Luna wasn’t really mad, and after a tense pause, she pounced. They wrestled for a minute before she managed to line Camille up under her back paws and kick, using the surge to hurl herself to all fours and take off running. I gave chase without hesitation, hearing a third stride pick up behind us.It was getting late, and Luna was racing us back in the direction of school. She had a head start, but it didn’t take long for me to catch up, and Camille soon after. We matched Luna’s easy pace, tired enough by now not to push. Before long we were back on the outskirts of the dorm buildings where we’d left our clothes hidden in backpacks up a tree. Luna was the first to Phase back to human, and then Camille and me, and I felt a cold shiver travel up my arms when the lack of fur left me bare to the winter chill.Finished dressing in a rush, Luna threw her backpack over her shoulders. “It’s freezing,” she said, pulling the hood of her jacket over her head of platinum blond hair, better shielding herself from the cold. “I’m out.” She tossed a wave at us and jogged off in the direction of the dorms.By the time I was done pulling on my shoes, Camille was dressed and holding my jacket up for me. I slipped my arms in, and then turned to wrap them around her neck and kiss her on the cheek. “Thanks.”She nodded in the direction Luna had disappeared. “I think that was the fastest you’ve ever pinned her.”“You helped,” I pointed out.“Only a little.” She slipped her hands underneath my jacket, and at first I thought it was to keep them warm against my skin, but then she slid one up to where I’d hit my back on the tree. “Are you bruised?”I shook my head. “Why?”“I think…” She hesitated, pausing in consideration. “I think our connection might be getting stronger. When you hit that tree, I could’ve sworn I felt it.”“It hurt you?” I asked in shock. The blood connection we shared was because of our emotional intimacy when Camille bit me, and it had grown stronger. We could always feel each other’s emotions, and sometimes the physical expressions of more extreme emotions – like my chest tightening from Camille’s heartbreak when she missed Lacey, her best friend who’d died last semester, or like we experienced some of the jumps and peaks in each other’s bodies when we got intimate – but it’d never extended to physical pain.“Not hurt,” she answered, and in the moonlight I watched her brown eyes squint in concentration. “Just a little pressure, like someone pushed me there.”I hummed. It was exciting progress – if it was progress– but I wasn’t ready to get serious yet. So I brushed her curly blond hair back over her shoulder, and dipped forward to nip at her neck, punctuating the action with a kiss. “That kind of pressure?” I whispered against her skin.We used teeth all the time in wolf form, but it’s effect on human Camille was always infinitely more stirring, and her fingers twitched on my hip. “Not quite,” she said.“Let me know when…” I opened my mouth against the side of her neck, biting gently and then soothing it with my lips, only to repeat the action a little harder.The second pass of my teeth had her hands gripping tighter, and by the third, she’d pulled me closer. She seemed to be enjoying it too much to say anything until my tongue touched down, and though she hummed her pleasure, she stopped pulling me closer. “Not out here,” she murmured, fingers flexing like they were trying their best to let me go. “It’s too cold.”“Alright,” I said, kissing up to her jaw. “Get your bag.” I kissed along her jaw to her chin. “And I’ll race you to the dorms.”One brief peck to her lips and then I’d grabbed my bag and was off. She laughed behind me, and then her swift two-legged stride was crunching through the snow. She was a better runner than me, and it didn’t take her long to catch up, but we were both panting by the time we reached the door of the building. I pulled my room keys from my bag and scanned my ID card so we could get through the front door. We walked through the lobby so as not to get yelled at by the security guard, who already didn’t look too happy about us coming in so late.We stayed on our best behavior while we waited for the elevator, and then while we got on and stood side by side, but the lift had only gone one floor before Camille’s hand reached over and slipped into the back pocket of my jeans. I clicked my tongue. “No self-control.”“This is self-control,” she said, but I could see the smirk on her face out of the corner of my eye as she squeezed my backside.It was past one in the morning, and we were probably the only ones wandering the building and I really didn’t care about self-control. I turned and grabbed the neck of her jacket to pull her to me, to get as much of her as I could before our elevator ride was over, but her lips barely grazed mine when the doors dinged and opened. One of my hands stayed clutched in her coat as we rushed down the hall to my dorm room, so it was already there when we got in and closed the door behind us. So it was that much easier for me to push the jacket off her shoulders and get to the rest of her clothing.And her lips finally met mine in the open kind of kiss that left me breathless. That kept me breathless until our clothes were scattered piles on the floor and we’d robbed each other of whatever energy was left after the run. Until we were a tuckered out mess of tangled limbs under the blankets on my bed, and Camille was tracing her usual tired lines up and down my back. I laid my head on her chest, listening to the thud of her heartbeat returning to normal while I tapped out every other pulse against her shoulder, trying to get my own to match it.