Free Shifter's Moon (Paranormal Shifter Romance) by Riva Blackstone

rubbed the fine line of her jawbone where the biker had hit her.  Remarkably there was no indication of bruising or swelling, but it was hard to tell in the dark.  Both of them seemed to be balanced on the edge of a cliff, and neither seemed willing to take one step back or one step forward.  Slowly, Jake pulled his hand back, finished the can that was lying beside him, and crunched it on the rock face. 
    They were quiet for several minutes, and he was surprised at how comfortable the silence could be with someone else who appreciated it.  Lia straightened her arms and leaned back with her legs outstretched in front of her and Jake noticed that all she was wearing was that iconic black tank-top that seemed to fold over her supple form as if it were her own shadow. 
                  Lia tilted her head back and he saw the fine delineation of her jaw as it pointed sharply at the nest of stars above them.  Back in the city the light pollution had made it impossible to get a very clear view of the night sky.  Except for a few bright points of light, Jake had grown accustomed to the orange restless hue of the urban skyline, and he wondered how he could have forgotten how vast and decorated the heavens were with their multitude of alien suns.  Lia must have noticed him transfixed by the stellar ceiling above them and leaned in closer until his hair brushed against the shoulder of his hoodie.
                  “See that one up there,” she said, and Jake could smell the sweet aroma of her skin again as he followed the length of her skinny arm to where she was pointing at some indistinct points of light, “that one right below the dipper, the three stars in a line, and then those two bright ones close together?”
                  “I see it.”
                  “That’s the Great Wolf. My grandmother would always point it out,”
                  “I don’t know that constellation.”
                  “I don’t think it’s any you would have heard of.  She used to say it was a constellation that was passed down through our family.  There used to be a village, a long time ago, and one winter game was so scarce that the villagers were starving.  One day a girl from the village went out to collect water and on the way back heard a strange sound coming from a cave.  When she went in to investigate there was a dead doe, and consumed by hunger she cut as much meat as she could and hurried home.
                  “The villagers were thankful for the gift, and when they asked where she had found the meat she lied and told them she had killed it herself.  The next day she returned to the cave to gather more meat.  But as she tried to leave for the second time she was confronted by a wolf, whose cave it was.  She tried to apologize for stealing the meat, and the wolf agreed to help her.  He bit her, and then she passed out.
                  “When she awoke she was a wolf.  Terrified, she tried to return to the village, but the other villagers were scared of her and chased her off.  She realized she had lost her human tongue and had no way to communicate with them.  But because she was a wolf, she was now able to hunt.  So that winter, and every other winter, the villagers would awake to find fresh meat at the foot of their village, and they knew that the girl had become a wolf and was looking after them.”
                  Jake nodded.  A gold gust of wind scattered across the flat face of the reservoir and moved up over the rocks.  He shivered.  “That’s a sad story,”
                  “But a good one.  Now she runs across the night sky, forever trying to return to her human shape, but cursed to live as a wolf,”
                  He was reminded of his dreams, the image of a large black lupine figure staring down at him.  The cold yellow eyes.  He decided against telling