Page 35 of To the Moon
"Thanks," he muttered, but as soon as he was on his feet, he pushed me away and beat me to the door.
The shower helped with my stiff muscles, but I couldn't wear anything constricting. Once we were back in our original room, I pulled on a pair of boxers, gray sweatpants, and a black long-sleeved waffle-knit thermal shirt.
Gunnar rolled his eyes at my selections, but he chose similar clothes from his side of the dresser. His sweatpants were black, and his thermal shirt was a brick red that brought out the gold in his hazel eyes. He was stunning, but every time he caught me staring, he frowned at me.
Bettina stood at the kitchen counter with her backto us when we arrived, but her quick actions to set the bistro table with plates warm from the oven and already-poured glasses of milk and orange juice told me she wasn't surprised to see us.
She stunned me when she smiled, first at Gunnar, and then at me. "Do you know why I took this job?" she asked.
I shook my head, and Gunnar's gaze bounced from me to her like he was watching a tennis match.
"I didn't either," she admitted. "It was something in your scent. You remind me of the old ones, the ulvschalters. It's very weak now in our blood, but my people remember."
"You know what happened to me?" Gunnar asked. "Did I go into … rut … or something?"
"Your mating cycle, yes. Nothing will come of it, since you're both men, but my great-grandpapa said it was still fun to try."
"You've known other … shifters?" I couldn't wrap my mind around it. If Dad knew there were more like us, he would have been rounding them up into research facilities.
"The blood is very thin now. None have shifted in three generations." She pointed to her nose. "I can smell better than most humans, but it's not a superpower. Imagine if Wonder Woman went around sniffing everything." She rolled her eyes, and I laughed.
"My family was the last to stay in the mountains," she said. "I thought we were the last on earth until I met you, and now your friend." She gave Gunnar another warm smile, and he blushed.
I was too shocked to eat the food on my plate. If Bettina's family had been wolf shifters, that meant someone in my family line, and Gunnar's, were probably shifters, too. How many were there in the world? And how soon before my father tried his experiments on them?
CHAPTER 14
GUNNAR
The next weekpassed in a blur. For two people on a forced vacation in the middle of nowhere, we stayed busy. Sebastian needed to fill every waking moment with physical activity. During the day, we hiked and skied on two feet. At night, we explored the vast forest as wolves.
The fitness regimen would have been super fucking annoying if he hadn't left me to my thoughts. Sometimes, we spoke mind-to-mind through our wolf bond, but when I asked, he left me alone. I still didn't know what it meant to be his mate, but I appreciated the time he gave me to figure it out.
After leaving us to fend for ourselves over the weekend, Bettina returned on Monday with pancakes as thin and delicious as crepes and a proposal. "My opa would like to meet you. Would you ride with me to Lausanne?"
I glanced at Sebastian, waiting for his answer. I wassurprised when he returned my gaze. "What do you think?"
"I'd love to see Lausanne," I said. "And meet your …"
"Grandfather," Bettina said. "He's the pack elder. We don't shift, but we stay together in packs. It's how we survived the Germans during the war."
She said "we" like she was there. "How old are you, exactly, if you don't mind me asking?"
She shook her head, laughing. "You are old enough to know better than to ask a woman her age!" She didn't look a day over sixty. Smiling and laughing at us, she looked even younger. "My opa is well over two hundred years old. I'm only half that."
"Half of two hundred?"
"He calls me 'young pup,' since I'm the youngest of his grandchildren."
Sebastian's eyes were as round as mine. "I had no idea."
"I apologize for not including my full work history," she said. "It would have raised too many eyebrows."
After she called her grandfather to arrange a visit on Thursday, we quizzed her on what she remembered of the last century. She answered readily, but when Sebastian asked her about her love interests, she shook her head and cleared our empty plates away. "Don't you have somewhere else to be?"
"Yes." Sebastian grinned. "We're going to hike the south trail."
"Again?" She frowned at him. "What did you find that you can't leave well enough alone?"
