The Amber Shift

Exclusive Chapter: Noelle, Elijah & Killian - A Little Help From a Friend

Elijah

"Come again?"

I pick up my bottle of beer from the table and take a long swig. Killian sits across from me with his mouth hanging open and hazel eyes wide. Not much surprises my oldest friend. He is normally the one with no filter. But my proposal seems to have done the job.

I gently set the bottle down and fold my hands on the tabletop. Leaning in, I drop my voice and say, "She's struggling since Caterina was born. Don't get me wrong, Noelle is a phenomenal mother. For six months, she has made our baby girl her world. And she still manages to treat me like a king. She's completely out of my league, man. But she's not feeling it."

Killian lifts a ginger brow. "So, you want me to..."

"Help me remind her how desirable she is. Nothing I'm doing is working. Every compliment I give her is countered with a remark about a physical flaw, and she is hiding from me. If I'm lucky, she will dim the lights when we have sex. Most of the time she will leave on articles of clothing, and we fuck in the dark."

It's Killian's turn to down the rest of his beer. The empty glass clinks on the table and he runs the back of his hand over his mouth. "I don't get how me getting involved changes Noelle's perception of herself. The woman is going to have to accept that all the new curves of her body after having a baby are sexy. This sounds like a job for a therapist, not a horny lycan."

I lean back in my chair and run my fingers through my hair. "We've been going to counseling alone and together. I'm desperate to help her get through this. If talking about my feelings to some middle-aged person helps, I'm down. To be honest, it's something Noelle said in one of our sessions that made me think of this. She was asked to share the time she was the happiest. Noelle said the list is long, but she remembers the first time she felt happy, loved, and desired. It was the time we spent at the cabin after her eighteenth birthday."

"She told you she misses getting dicked down by three lycan males at once?"

I shoot Killian a death glare, warning him to watch the way he speaks about my mate. I can tolerate a lot, but not the disrespect of the person I love most in this world. "Watch the way you talk about your queen, Barlowe."

He holds up his hands in surrender. "I just don't understand why you can't write the woman a poem and take her away for a romantic weekend. Noelle has never been hard to please."

He's right; it should be that easy. I try every day to show my mate how desirable I find her. She is just as beautiful, if not more so, as she was at eighteen. I love every stretchmark on her soft stomach and the way her hips have widened from carrying our child. I shower her with compliments, over-the-top actions, and gifts. She looks past every single one of my attempts to prove how much I want her, hung up on a single uncontrollable truth.

"She says I wouldn't feel the way I do if I wasn't her mate. Basically, she believes I'm blinded by love."

"As it should be," Killian says, raising his glass in a mock toast.

I cock my head to the side and regard him with quickly growing impatience. "Perhaps. But she needs to feel good about herself again. It's so painful to see her so uncomfortable in her own skin. Will you help or not? Don't make me ask Remi because that's just—"

Killian holds up a hand. "Stop. That's your sister's mate, my dude. That's weird, even for us." I nod, knowing that would get him to agree. "When do you want this to go down?"

"As soon as possible."

"Like..."

"This weekend," I say without hesitation before he has a chance to come up with a reason he needs to wait.