Feral

Several of the pack assured him he'd only be held here until they were certain he wasn't a danger to anyone else. But he knew better. In the midst of his frenzy he'd bitten an innocent girl, the mate to one of the pack leaders as it turned out. She survived, but that situation did not bode well for him and he knew it. 

Not that he blamed them. 

He spent his whole life hating and hunting down shapeshifters without ever understanding anything about them. Shifters called the hunters fanatics, where Brody simply called them family. 

Now, forced to walk in their skin it was easy to see just how narrow-minded he had been. Is that the way it always went? Hindsight and all that bullshit. 

A growl formed deep in his throat. With the sun hidden behind the dark grey clouds, the outside seemed to match his inside as a storm continued to brew. 

In the midst of his confusion after being accidentally bitten, the scent of a mate had given him hope and lured him to Devil's Point Island. 

The disappearance of that scent had created a monster. One that refused to settle down no matter how hard he tried. 

According to the pack living here on the island, his frenzy should have ended with mating season. The one time of year when all wolves go a little crazy with the need to find and bond with a mate. Only it didn't. 

Weeks had passed and nothing changed. He still wanted to tear down the walls of his cell brick by brick and go on a hunt. Except he had no clue where to start. 

The beautiful brown-haired girl he'd found on the beach had disappeared just as she appeared—without a trace. 

After first scenting her in wolf form, he'd followed her scent for miles before finally coming upon her sitting on the beach in front of a campfire roasting marshmallows and laughing with her friends. 

Night had fallen and the golden glow of the burning logs cast an ethereal aura around her. Instead of shifting and approaching her, he'd been a dumb ass and chosen to sit on his haunches and watch her from afar. 

After traveling so long to catch her and not understanding the irresistible draw, he simply wanted to savor the moment. 

He couldn't see the color of her eyes and had no idea what her name was, but in the soft light with the cool breeze blowing through his fur, none of that mattered. 

Listening to her laugh with her scent wrapping around him calmed the chaos raging inside him. For the first time in weeks he'd felt a semblance of peace. Something even his human life never gave him. 

Of course he'd been an idiot and waited too long. By the time he was ready to talk to her she'd disappeared into her tent and he didn't want to scare her by stalking her in her sleep.

Instead, he resigned himself to let them both get some rest before he approached her. He took cover in the tree line for the night and laid his body down in a soft spot of grass and fell asleep almost before his chin hit the ground. 

When he woke she was gone. Somehow he'd slept through her departure and no amount of searching the island and surrounding areas had turned up even a trace of her. 

He'd lost his mate.

His human side still balked at the idea of a fated mate. His sister, Allison, had been led down that path not long ago and now seemed somewhat settled with her new mate Diego. 

She visited him everyday and he believed she might be happy if not for the worry lines that creased her forehead every time she saw him.

Brody pulled his gaze back from the beach and dropped to the floor and began doing push ups. Since he couldn't run free, he was forced to do calisthenics to ease some of the energy constantly overloading his system. 

It didn't exactly work. But it made him almost civil so, he continued to do it everyday. 

Like every other day the number of reps flew by, sweat coated his body and his brain temporarily focused on the task at hand. 

He wasn't thinking about anything beyond the determination to keep going so the new scent from the open window slammed into him unexpectedly. 

Brody dropped and rolled, his hands ripping at the pants that confined his shift. 

It couldn't be. 

Before he registered what was happening claws tore at his zipper as he began to change and he barely got the denim off his legs before the bones popped and fur sprouted across his body. 

He jumped on the window and inhaled deep, sticking his snout through the bars. It was there. The unmistakable scent of the woman never far from his mind.

No way.

The wolf began clawing at the walls below the window despite the fact the concrete construction gave him absolutely no way out.

He didn't care. All that mattered was getting to the woman he needed more than anything else. He scratched and scraped until his forearms ached and his claws were worn down to the quick. 

"Brody, what the hell are you doing?"