Blue Moon Blues

Chapter Five

Panicking like I've never panicked before, I recoiled from the door knob and propelled myself all the way back into my own body. My eyes had been shut and they popped open as soon as I was myself again.

The cuts on my forehead started to sting from my newly formed crown of cold sweat and I couldn't stop myself from panting like I was out of breath. I was no longer in the Indigo, so I could see Dominic clear as day when I jerked my head in his direction.

His eyes were closed and his chin rested on his chest but he was exactly where I had last marked him, leaning against the wall in the back of the room. It shouldn't be possible for Dominic to take over one of his wolves' bodies, my brain frantically tried to assure to me. But no matter how much I wanted to believe that I was simply having a temporary lapse of sanity, I couldn't lie to myself and the fact that Dez and I were now playing a far more dangerous game than I could have ever imagined terrified me beyond words.

And that terror only tripled when I turned back to check on the fight between Desiree and Dominic-in-James'-body. James/Dominic was still limping and his snout was bleeding profusely, but he clearly had the upper hand in the fight. There were splatters of blood smeared across the pads on the floor and most of it had to be from Dez.

She was oozing blood from several gashes on her arms and torso, and her face was swollen, bruised, and bloodied. Despite currently being in the middle of trading blows with James/Dominic, everything about Dez seemed still, as if her entire body, including her breathing, was focused on fighting.

She had been stalling to give me time to put our plan into action and the only thing I had managed to accomplish was falling right into Dominic's trap and getting Dez seriously injured. I wasn't sure how much Dez had been holding back initially, but judging from the exchange of blows I was currently watching, she was no longer restraining herself. With Dominic's added strength and his repertoire of honed martial skills, I was no longer sure if Dez could win the match. At least not in her human form.

And she had realized it too. Her Change was so close to the surface that I was pretty sure it was the real reason for the stillness that had come over her, struggling to focus on the fight in front of her rather than the one within.

Under normal circumstances, I would have jumped right in to help calm the raging beast that threatened to overtake her. But how could I do that to her now when Changing could possibly be the only thing that prevented her death, the fate of Dom and his Pack be damned?

By this time, Dez must have noticed that I was back in my body and about to piss myself because I felt her reach out to me through our link. She couldn't see what I had witnessed in James' head, didn't know what I knew about the Alpha in wolf's clothing. But she could feel every last drop of my fear, every last shred of my helplessness.

It took barely half a second for Desiree to accept her own death. Her ironclad determination to protect me flooded our bond, combining potently with her resolve not to Change. I couldn't read her thoughts but I could follow her reasoning well enough. She was convinced that as long as she didn't Change and escalate the situation by killing James, then I still had a chance to walk out of this alive. Sadly, she wasn't wrong.

Her decision was characteristically Desiree, ever the pragmatic fatalist. It didn't surprise me that I couldn't sense any hint of despair from Dez. She's never feared death, only the deaths of those she cared about, and so she accepted her fate as simply as one might reluctantly bear with a minor inconvenience. The Dez that I knew -my frustratingly noble, self-sacrificing friend- would fight bravely and give it everything she had.