“I found syrup, but there’s no butter. There's also no milk unless you’re fine with a powdered creamer in your coffee—but you did say you didn’t do dairy. Everything here is designed to last through an apocalypse.”
It didn't take long for Wyatt to scarf down not only more than half the pancakes, but several pieces of baked chicken breast he’d made on the side. While I admired his dedication to protein intake, I stuck to carbs. I tore through my breakfast in record time, too, both because I was starving and because I was suddenly desperate to find out this whole other side of me that I had never known about.
“I clearly didn’t feed you enough before you passed out.”
“I want to see if I really have some fangs and fur going on,” I said. “Wait, does this mean I need to be naked in front of you?”
“I wouldn't complain.”
“Not gonna happen, you horndog,” I snapped, embarrassed.
He laughed. He really laughed, leaning back in his chair, arms out to the side, the humor seeming to bubble up from his stomach and pour out his core in a way that I found both dangerously sexy and agonizingly irresistible. “You're the one who brought it up, Cara. Keep playing with fire and…”
“I'll get burned?”
He sent me a slow, saucy wink. “Where's the fun in that? No, you'll feel the heat.”
“Keep your dirty thoughts out of my head.”
“They’re all yours,” he told me, smug.
It didn't take long for us to figure out a compromise. There was a large glass back door in the rear end of the living room, and we decided that he would shift inside, then run around outside for me to get a feel for what being a shifter was like. I would strip down, wrap myself in a blanket, and stay inside to see what I could do.
When he started to take off his clothes, I turned around as I usually did. “Are you ready to let me push the connection between our minds?”
Oh, shit. All he's going to see is my intense desire to turn around and stare at him. “How about I just have access to yours?”
“Is that because you’re thinking dirty thoughts about me being naked?”
“Not in the slightest,” I lied.
His voice moved closer to me, and the hair on my neck stood straight up. “You sure about that? Didn’t seem like it when you saw me with my shirt off this morning.”
“Just to get your fur on, wolf boy,” I snapped.
A moment later, the now-familiar connection expanded past the constant thread. Through the usual tangle of sexual awareness and dark strength, he was also focusing on how excited he was to shift, his desire to show me how I could, too. “Are you ready?”
I braced myself. “Yes.”
Shifting… hurt. I was startled by the sensations Wyatt was channeling into my mind. Bones felt as though they were twisting, muscles cramped and roiled, organs reformed themselves. But even though there was pain, it was more muted than I thought it would be. Like a really bad set of monthly cramps.
But there was a pleasure to, pleasure that outshone the pain. Senses changed, some growing duller, most turning sharper. Just like what I had experienced after the necklace fell off. A moment later, I heard a bark, and felt a wave of excitement crash through me. Turning, I watched him throw himself through the open doorway, digging furiously as he tunneled through the formerly pristine snowbanks. There was an almost childish joy pouring out of him and into me, one where everything in this bright, happy world was his playground. I ached to join him, and focused on the sensations I’d felt secondhand as he changed.
That strange rippling sensation that I had before came again, but this time, it hurt. I blindly reached for the sofa as my entire body felt caught somewhere between uncomfortable and in pain. Am I shifting? I clung to the sensations Wyatt showed me, focused as hard as I could on what I imagined being a wolf was like. The joy of digging through the snow, four legs pumping hard, wagging my tail, the image of Wyatt's wolf, but giving it my hair and eye color. And for a brief second, I thought I would reach it…
I collapsed on the ground, naked under the blanket, sweating as though I'd sprinted a mile. Wyatt's wolf was next to me, snow clinging in chunks to his thick fur, tongue hanging out. “Did I change into a wolf there?” I asked him.
He shook his head.
“I felt something.” I told him. “I think I was close.”
He licked my cheek.
We practiced for hours. Over and over again, he shifted back and forth between his human and wolf form, carefully and patiently sharing every single ounce of experience he possibly could through our connection. Over and over again, I could feel the changes in my body, but I never quite made it over that final hill. After the umpteenth time, I flopped onto the sofa. He’d already changed into sweats and had been lounging on the sofa, watching me struggle and offering the occasional piece of feedback. “I need a break. How did you do this when you were a kid? Did someone teach you how to do this?”
“As far back as I can remember, we could always do it. As a child, the shift was often instinctive, and not something planned. It's why we always try to keep our children hidden from humans, because all it takes is a car backfiring and your cute little toddler will suddenly change into a snarling pup. Tough to explain to anyone who saw it, especially with all the filming and social media these days.”
“Do you guys stay away from humans?”
“We keep the cubs separate. As for adults, some are quite happy to live with and work around humans. Others prefer to stay completely away, live tucked away in some remote forest where they could easily live out their days without a human ever laying eyes on them. It depends on the pack, it depends on the shifter, and it depends on how rural or urban the shifter wants to be.”
“Does that mean I shifted when I was a child?”
“You probably did. Or maybe you were a delayed shifter. My brother didn’t shift until he hit puberty. Worried the shit out of everyone. That's something you'll have to–” He cut himself off.
“Something I’ll have to ask my father?”
He growled. “I don't want any more of his fucking lies poisoning what's between us.”
“I'm not going to completely stop talking to my father,” I told him.
He visibly struggled for a moment. Finally, he said, “I know that. It would be wrong of me to expect you to do it.”
“Yet you want to.”
“There is a difference between me wanting you to do something and me expecting you to do it.”
“My father is the only family I left on this earth,” I shot back. I don't know why I was being this petty. I felt cranky, tired, and frustrated with myself for not being able to do the one thing I desperately wanted to do right now–learn how to control this new reality I had inexplicably been granted access to.
“You have me now,” he said quietly.
“It's not the same.”
“I hope that one day, not only will it be the same, but it will be better.”
I didn't know what to say to that without sounding like a colossal bitch, so I held my tongue.
There was an uncomfortable silence, then he wiped away a small drop of sweat from my face. It felt like an apology for his ways, and a reminder that he was there for me. My heart ached. “Want to try a few more times?”
I didn't, but the only way I would learn is to keep failing for a little bit longer first. “Let's do this.”
I kept practicing while he wandered around outside, digging tunnels and touching base every few minutes to make sure I was safe. At one point, he dragged a small, ratty-looking fir into the cabin and pronounced it our Christmas tree, decorating it with random ties and sashes he found in the closets. I laughed until I nearly cried, but there was more cheer in that pathetic looking pile of twigs and threads than every other holiday season I’d ever had before. When I told him that, he reached out and squeezed my hand. Just once.
And it was perfect.