The Wolf God's Unwanted Luna

Chapter 74: signature look

I picked up my phone from where I’d left it earlier that morning and started tapping away at random games. Anything to keep my mind occupied. But no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t stop my thoughts from circling back. I shoved the looming anxiety about my parents’ arrival as far back as I could, trying to bury it under everything else.

Instead, my focus shifted to the gnawing discomfort in my chest, the feeling of being utterly useless. While I’d spent the day lounging with Hannah and strolling through boutiques, part of me felt like I should be doing something meaningful. I didn’t want to just drift around in Zaliver’s world. I wanted to contribute, to stand beside him, not trail behind.

That thought planted a seed. Maybe I could talk to him, convince him to let me help somehow. There had to be something I could do. Then I started wondering about his role in all of this. Being the Lupus Deus wasn’t just leading a pack. It was leading alphas, managing territories, balancing politics and power and gods only knew what else. How did he even find the time to be with me?

I didn’t get to go much further down that train of thought.

I felt him before I heard him.

The tether between us grew shorter, tighter. The bond shifted from a distant pull to something more immediate, wrapping around me like a hand closing gently. He was close. Very close.

Then I heard it, barely there, the soft patter of his footsteps, too light and fast for a normal wolf. And before I could fully get to my feet, he was already inside, standing behind me.

"You know," I said with a half-laugh as I turned around, "you’re freakishly fast. Remind me never to race you."

I stepped around the couch to face him, but the way his gaze dropped from my face and slid slowly down my body made me stop mid-step. His eyes darkened, his wolf coming to the surface in a way I could feel like static on my skin.

"You," he murmured.

Just the one word, just that, and it sent a shiver the full length of my spine.

I stayed where I was, unable to take that last step toward him. The way he was looking at me had a weight to it, something between hunger and reverence, and it pinned me there as effectively as anything else he’d ever done. My heart thudded in my chest, heat moving up my neck to my cheeks.

His chest rose and fell slowly. I’d be lying if I said my eyes didn’t drop for half a second to the lean cut of him through that black shirt. Well. If he was going to look at me like that, I figured the score was even.