The Alpha's Mate Read Online Free PDF Page B

That was impossible.
    She sucked in a breath, but her lungs wouldn't fill up. She breathed and breathed, but her vision grew hazy and her hands shook. This wasn't real, this couldn't be real. Max had not just turned into a freaking wolf right in front of her.
    She needed to get out of here, but that was a wolf. Wolves chased their pray if it ran. And she wouldn't be safe outside, that was it's natural hunting ground. "Nice, doggy," she whispered, nearly crying. She should have never come here. Not to Max's house, not to Idaho, she should have never left home if it meant that she was going to end up eaten by some impossible creature.
    No.
    She refused.
    She sucked in a breath, slowly this time. Counting out out three seconds before she let herself exhale. And then another breath, and another. Her hands stopped shaking, her heartbeat returned to somewhere under 200 beats per minute. She knew wolves, they were her thing. And they didn't hunt people. Not usually.
    Though she had no experience with werewolves.
    Her heartbeat shot up once more, but she pushed the thought aside. Just talk to him, she ordered herself. If it's Max, he can hear you. "Max..." What were you supposed to say when the guy you were with turned into a giant freaking wolf. "Can you be normal again, please?" It was worth a shot.
    The wolf whined a little and let out a huff. He laid down and the air shimmered once more, fur rippling like his skin had just moments ago. The wolf disappeared and in his place lay Max, panting, sweating, but fully clothed, and fully human. He stood and met her eyes.
    "So," Kelly said. "You're a werewolf."
    Max nodded. "And so are you."
    Kelly flipped. Max eased himself into a chair as she sputtered across from him. Changing like that exhausted him, and he would love nothing more than to curl up in his bed for the next week. But he owed it to her to let her know what had happened. The full moon would be in less than a week and he needed to know she would be safe.
    "You're crazy," she was saying. "That's not possible. How on Earth would it even be? I've never turned into a wolf in my life."
    Max reached across the table and grabbed her hand. He could feel her pulse stutter and slow. Her breathing calmed and she paused, looking at him. "It's my fault," he admitted, but he didn't let go of her hand. Even with the confession, she didn't pull away.
    She covered his hand with her own, tracing circles around one of his knuckles. "How? I'm not saying I believe you, but how?"
    Max had no idea how to play this. He had never heard of a person being turned like this, and usually anyone who was turned ended up finding a pack after their first full moon. So he decided to simply tell the truth. "From when I bit you. It was completely on accident," he added the last quickly. "I think there's something about you." He couldn't tell her about the mating urge. That would be too much. "You felt something too, right?"
    Her hand convulsed around his. "A bit like being hit by a freight train? Is that part of this werewolf thing?"
    She seemed to take it better than he could have expected. Though part of that had to be the contact. Whatever this thing was between them, he would thank it for now. "You were sick the last couple of days." It wasn't a question, but she nodded. "It's like an infection, it passes through a bite, though usually when we're in our wolf forms. And then the person who was bitten gets a fever, they fall into a coma-like sleep, and a day or so later awake like nothing happened."
    "So the flu turned me into a werewolf?" Sarcasm dripped.
    "When someone's attacked, they don't usually know anything went wrong. Or that they're no longer uncu--no longer a normal human. Until the full moon."
    "Let me guess," she said, "Then they go furry and eat the family dog?"
    But Max didn't smile. The full moon defined everything of a werewolf's existence. Life revolved around it, if only to mitigate the damage. "It's actually the only night we can't change."