Ready to Run: Werewolves in Love, Book 3

by Kinsey W. Holley

“Thank you. White, no sugar, please.”

  Well, if Nick wasn’t behaving how a werewolf should, Julian at least seemed to be taking it into his stride. Perhaps Nick would pluck up the courage to offer him a digestive biscuit. Or, if he was feeling really brave, a Jaffa Cake. Nick grinned at himself under cover of boiling the kettle.

  As they sat together with steaming cups of instant, Nick found himself hoping like hell Julian would take the conversational initiative soon, or any minute now he’d be saying “Well, this is nice, isn’t it?” like a member of the Women’s Institute taking tea with the vicar, and then he’d have to kill himself. He managed not to sigh in relief as Julian rested his mug on his knee and cleared his throat.

  “We should go for a run together sometime. You know, as wolves.” Julian’s manner was a little hesitant, and his finger traced a circle around the top of his mug.

  Was he offering because he thought he ought, or because he wanted to? “I—well, are you sure that’s wise?” Visions of Carl shot through Nick’s head. God, there’d been so much blood…

  “As long as we don’t go to Coe Fen, why not?”

  “You don’t think we might, well, fight?”

  From the look Julian gave him, one might have thought he’d just suggested they invite the Master and all the fellows along for the trip. “Of course we would not fight.” He blinked. “You have places you like to go?”

  “Ah, yes. Well, a place. Some woods out to the south of town.”

  Another sidelong look. “You think it’s safe to go to the same place all the time?”

  “Well, it’s only once a month, after all.”

  “Once a month? You mean you don’t change any more frequently than that?”

  Nick was getting rather tired of Julian’s incredulous expressions. “Since that is the approximate frequency of full moons, no, I don’t,” he told him rather shortly. “What on earth are you talking about?”

  Julian stared at him in that curious way of his, tilting his head away and looking at Nick out of the corner of his eye. “You mean you’ve never changed except at full moon?”

  “I wasn’t aware that it was even possible,” Nick said slowly. “In any case, why on earth would I want to? It’s hardly a barrel of laughs. Why would anyone want that kind of pain any more often than they had to endure it?”

  Julian drew in a sharp breath. “If you change more frequently, the pain lessens. Considerably. I can’t believe you didn’t know that.”

  “Well, forgive me for not having been brought up by werewolves!” Nick regretted his temper immediately, as Julian’s face took on that closed look he’d seen all too often. “Look, I’m sorry,” Nick forced himself to say. “It’s just a little galling—I’ve been a werewolf for three years now, and here you are, telling me I’ve been doing it wrong all this time!”

  Julian shifted position on the sofa, looking uncomfortable. He looked at the mug in his hand for a moment, then carefully placed it on the floor by his feet. “What about the one that turned you? Didn’t he teach you anything?”

  Nick snorted. “Apart from not to go sneaking round my boyfriend’s house on full moon nights to see if he was cheating on me, no, he didn’t.”

  He sighed, remembering. He’d met Carl whilst doing his PhD at Durham University, a place he’d chosen on a whim because he’d never really been up north and he’d fancied a change of scene. It hadn’t hurt that it had something of a reputation as a home from home for Oxbridge graduates. Carl had been a postgrad Modern Languages student doing French and German.

  They’d met at the Durham version of the CUGS Stammtisch, which Nick had been disappointed to discover involved rather less beer and rather more discussion of worthy topics than its Cambridge counterpart. They hadn’t hit it off straight away, and in truth the relationship had always been a little uneasy, each of them seeming to feel a need to score points off the other. Nick had been rather appalled to discover this hitherto unsuspected side of himself.

  And then one afternoon Carl had told Nick abruptly that he wouldn’t be seeing him that evening. Somehow Nick hadn’t been able to shake the feeling that Carl wasn’t telling the truth about his reasons.

  So, fired by motives he hadn’t cared to examine too closely, he’d borrowed a friend’s car and driven out to Carl’s little rented cottage, way out in the back of beyond. There had been a light shining from the living room window. Nick had been planning to simply knock on the door—of course he had—but hadn’t been able to resist just taking a look through the window. Just to reassure himself. As he’d made his way around the house, something had leapt at him. He’d been knocked flat on his back, looking into bloodthirsty eyes. Hot, reeking breath had flooded his nose, making him gag, and he’d been paralysed with fear. And then the creature had bitten him. Hard, on the shoulder, tearing his flesh and drawing blood—lots of blood. Nick had never known pain like it. He’d screamed with the agony of it, but there had been no one there to hear. And then the creature had howled, and he’d passed out.

  He’d woken up on Carl’s sofa, his shoulder feeling so bloody awful he’d actually checked to see if his arm was still there. Carl had been hovering around agitatedly. He’d had the gall to blame Nick for what had happened. Said it wasn’t his fault Nick had come sneaking around. Had said a lot of rather confusing stuff about instincts and claiming that Nick hadn’t understood at all. Not at the time, anyway.

  These days, of course, he understood it all rather too well.

  And then had been the worst part—Carl telling him he’d been the beast that had attacked Nick. That he was a werewolf—had been bitten by one during his year studying in Heidelberg and turned into one himself. Nick hadn’t believed a word of it, of course. He’d let Carl drive him back to town, where he’d gone straight to the doctor’s for a rather better patch-up job than Carl had managed, and a tetanus jab. They’d parted on extremely strained terms, as was only to be expected.

  He hadn’t seen much of Carl after that. He’d been aware that something was—not quite right, as the weeks went on, but he’d put it down to the trauma of being attacked by a ravening beast and the same night finding out his boyfriend was insane.

  On the afternoon of the next full moon, Carl had turned up out of the blue and practically forced him into his car. Nick hadn’t known what had appalled him more—Carl’s almost violent manner, or his own reaction to it. He’d had to restrain himself from attacking the man, had felt a fierce urge to fight him, to dominate.

  When they’d reached Carl’s cottage…the angry wait for the moon to rise—after all, might as well humour the madman…the almost comical shock of seeing Carl strip in preparation for the transformation that Nick was firmly convinced would not happen…and the tearing, gut-wrenching agony of his own first transformation.

  And then, it seemed, the wolf’s instincts had taken over.

  Julian was looking at him. As Nick registered this, the boy’s eyes dropped once more. Nick took a deep breath, trying to control himself. Thinking about Carl when he was with Julian was, he decided, a very bad idea. Although the instinct involved was rather different.