A few splashes echoed from further down the seawall, and Sam gave me a wink. “Not even top ten?”
My heart leapt with every splash around me. I’d been alone. A fool. And suddenly, Sam was here at my side.
Jax looked down at the woebegone wolf before him and picked it up by the scruff. “Fine. It seems like we’re all going for a swim, per your suggestion. Therefore, you get to be the last one out.”
Then, with an enormous heave, Jaxson hurled the hapless creature skyward and out into the lake.
He smiled warmly down at me as more wolves plunged into the lake all around us. “It seems you’ve started a new tradition.”
He crouched, and then, with a powerful leap, he cannonballed himself into the air, spinning head over heels. Before I could react, he slammed into the water with a splash that washed me shoreward. Sam was cackling and trying to wipe the water out of her eyes.
Following Jaxson, the whole pack flooded into the dark, cool waters of Lake Michigan. Howls and hoots erupted around me.
Laughing as Sam splashed me, I whipped my head around, searching for Jax. He was nowhere.
Powerful hands grabbed me from below and thrust me into the dark sky. My subsequent unacrobatic bellyflop cut my surprised scream short.
I kicked my way back to the surface and found Jaxson watching with a wicked grin.
“You bastard,” I snarled playfully as I leapt at him. He evaded me with ease, and Sam laughed.
She wasn’t as fast as Jax or prepared for me to turn on her, and she let out a surprised squeak as I shoved her under the water. When she popped back up, she was laughing even harder than before. All around us, werewolves were playing in the water, wrestling, swimming, and doing flips off the seawall.
It was like a raucous adults-only pool party. Everyone was wet and naked, and having a good time.
It was perhaps the craziest thing I’d ever done—skinny-dipping with werewolves. But somehow, for the first time in almost a month, I felt inexplicably normal.