“I’m not a coward.” I covered his hands with mine. “You deserve more than this. You deserve someone who cares about you. Not your status in the pack.”

“Ellis, you know what accepting her challenge means.”

“Yes.” I wet my lips, well aware of what I was doing. Claiming him. The alternative? Losing him? Not an option. “It means all the brownies I can eat for as long as we both shall live.”

A softness warmed his eyes, and he nuzzled my cheek. “I’ll even throw in homemade ice cream for free.”

Sucking in a tight breath, I tried smiling at his joke. Mostly the mention of food and fighting made me want to vomit. “I’ll need your help.”

He understood and gripped my hand tighter. “Take what you need.”

The nail covering my right hand’s middle finger popped off as my spur emerged. I pierced his skin and braced for the snap of connection, my breath held in anticipation. I wanted it, craved it, and a drop of his blood thrust me into familiar headspace.

His presence was a brilliant warmth in my thoughts, his fury a broiling sea beneath his skin. Through the static hum of the pack bond, I identified one voice, one light that was somehow both heard and seen, that burned brighter in my mind’s eye than all the others combined. To me, Graeson was a creature of light, the mental image superimposed over the physical, and he was glorious.

My forearms stung as lush fur rippled down them. Practicing with Isaac had helped, because the magic splintered, shifting both my arms into thickly muscled wargish limbs. Blinking, I tried clearing the glare from my vision only to realize I wasn’t seeing things. My adopted pelt wasn’t the silver I’d expected, nor was it Aisha’s black or Dell’s golden blond. The hairs were platinum with black tips, a meld of all three.

“Are you sure this is what you want?”

Graeson was a whisper of strength amid the soul-crushing doubt churning my thoughts, his question exposing an insecurity I had never glimpsed in him. It humanized him and reminded me that at the end of the day, with his ego checked at the door, he was just a man. I had given him no reason to hope this relationship was what I wanted, because I hadn’t known myself until a slavering warg dared to stake her claim on what was mine.

“This is the rest of your life we’re talking about.” I glowered at Bessemer. “It’s worth fighting for. You are worth fighting for.”