Free Alpha Curves (Paranormal BBW Shifter Romance): Wolf Clan Book 3 by Christa Wick

disappointment."
    "Someone certainly is." Dana folded his thick arms across his chest, his topaz gaze glittering with a fresh challenge. "You keep trying to convince yourself it’s not you. Might work eventually."
    Iris dropped her chin, her eyes still glaring upward at the big wolf. She felt the zip of witch light up her spine and down her arms, her fingers beginning to tingle and sizzle as her anger mushroomed. At the same time, she noticed subtle changes in the big wolf's body that signaled an impending shift to his were-state. The fine blond hair covering his arms coarsened. His muscles grew more sinewy and the distinct pop of joints echoed in Iris’s ears as Dana became slightly taller.
    Esme spun toward her mate, her delicate hands knotting in his shirt as she dragged him off the couch and pushed him toward the cabin door. "Why must I continually kick you out of my house?" she chided.
    Iris felt the anger leave her as Dana gave his mate an incredulous look. His lower lip trembled in what seemed like exasperation. Iris had to keep her own mouth from curving upward in a grin as she witnessed the big bad wolf being pussy whipped by his soft, fluffy wife.
    Almost grudgingly, she admired the witch. Like Iris, Esme had grown up within the clan but entirely separate from it. Like Iris, she also had never looked like the wolves around her, her body too plump and curvy to blend into the background. Yet Esme had not only survived, she had thrived and was a mere formality away from officially becoming the local clan leader’s mate.
    And she had Dana wrapped around her little finger.
    "Baby..." He half-begged, seeming to forget that he and his mate had an audience. "You know better than anyone why she needs to take that silver off--"
    Esme silenced his protest with a gentle kiss, her lips lingering over his as she spoke. "I also know better than anyone why she wants to keep it on."
    The kiss or her words took all the fight out of him. Offering one last defiant eye roll at Iris, he stepped onto the front porch and pulled the door shut behind him.
    With her mate out of the room, Esme settled onto the couch next to Iris.
    "Sorry about that," she offered with a blushing smile as she resumed threading the needle.
    Iris released a sigh, knowing the witch was going to make her ask what Dana had meant. She tried to hold off, to force Esme into speaking first, but Dana’s words knocked around in her skull until she lost control of the question.
    "What did he mean by you knowing better than anyone else?"
    Esme gave a little dip of her head, put the needle and thread down and retrieved some loose witch’s lace from a plastic bag.
    "Well," the witch started. "What I’m about to teach you is something I had to do for almost a decade to hide what I was--"
    "Everyone knew you were a witch," Iris interrupted. "I mean, your mom’s a witch and you started casting early if I remember correctly."
    "Your memory is solid. I healed my first tumor at nine." Esme responded. "But I’m also a latent. My mother had been sewing the silver and witch’s lace into my clothes since I was a baby to hide that fact. She also basically forbade my being naked beyond a two-minute shower. Staying clothed was deeply ingrained in me before I was ever old enough to consider taking them off for...other reasons."
    Esme looked at her mate on the porch, her eyes glistening with the threat of fresh tears. "I didn’t know about my being a latent until it was too late. I wanted children and, because I wasn’t a wolf, Dana didn’t think he could give them to me."
    It was Iris’s turn to nod. Hank Mercer had tried to give her a violent lesson in the breeding of wolves, taunting her the entire time that, if Cade took her as his mate, there would be no children and the entire clan would suffer from having one less mating pair.
    "So, Dana pushed me away," Esme continued, her hands starting to shake as she worked the witch’s lace. "I lived every day in pain -- so did he.