Whoopsie Daisy

by C. Sunrise

  “So, you’re saying I passed out around you again.” I groan and shake my head. “Great. You know passing out is really something I would like to stop doing, if you don’t mind.” I laugh and cuddle into his chest with a heavy exhale.

  He continues talking about something, but I wasn’t paying much attention—focussing instead on the backs of my eyelids. I fall asleep to the steady sound of his heartbeat and the deep, soothing rumble of his voice.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  “Boss,” the guard says into his phone. “You told me to let you know if I see anything.”

  “What did you see?”

  “It might be nothing, and it’s hard to see because she wasn’t looking directly at the camera,” the guard continues. “But I swear I saw her eyes flicker. They got lighter and darker.”

  “That’s it? Nothing else?” An annoyed growl vibrates from the phone speaker.

  “No, that was all,” the guard replies, rubbing the back of his neck. “She’s still just walking around the room talking to herself and trying to figure out why she’s here.”

  “She hasn’t tried to escape yet?”

  “No, she hasn’t tried to escape.” The man on the phone sighs at the guard’s response. “I’ll keep you posted if I notice anything else.”

  “Watch her closely. I’ll be back soon, and she’ll wish she gave me what I wanted right away. Don’t feed her or give her anything to drink.”

  “Yes, boss,” the guard replies, before ending the call and turning his full attention to the surveillance screen.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  I wake up to an empty bed and huff in disappointment, missing Kace’s warm body pressed up against mine. Although thinking about our hot morning the other day would be enough to warm me up in a hurry. If only that’s how I woke up every morning, or at least started my day with a back rub or something; I’m not picky and am open to suggestions. I snicker as I project those thoughts and Kace and Blaze in the hopes they can hear me and they’re taking notes.

  I roll over and grab my phone from the bedside table to check the time. Eleven o’clock. I’m relieved to see it’s still morning and surprised by how rejuvenated I feel.

  There are two message notifications on my phone: Blaze checking in to see how I’m doing today and Kace telling me he’d be back at noon. I reply to Blaze and let him know that I’m much better after my sleep and that I hope his neck has healed. Then I reply to Kace, telling him I’m looking forward to seeing him and training today. I put my phone back on the bedside table and make my way to the bathroom for a nice warm shower.

  Once showered and dressed for the day, I go to the kitchen to stop my stomach’s incessant grumbling. I’ve got my head jammed in the refrigerator, wiggling my bum from side to side while rummaging for something to eat when there’s a knock at the front door.

  “Perfect bloody timing,” I mutter as I shut the fridge door and walk to the front door, plotting the demise of whoever has so rudely interfered with my meal.

  As I open the door, I catch a whiff of food and almost pounce on it. Kace recognises the look in my eyes and laughs. My obsession with food made me forget that he was coming over. Any man who wants to be in my life needs to accept that he’ll always come in second place to food—foods before dudes.

  “Hungry, Kitten?” He smirks.

  “Don’t read too much into this, but I seriously love you right now.” I stretch my arm out and grab at the bag of mystery food.

  “Don’t worry, I already know you love me.” He winks as he releases the bag. “Shifting uses a lot of energy and will make you ridiculously hungry. You didn’t have much in the kitchen, so I went out and got us something from town.”

  Our kitchen is usually fully stocked, but with my parents out of town and Percy travelling for work, the fridge and pantry have been unusually bare. Stocking up on good, healthy food is something I mentally add to my ‘getting my life together to-do list’.

  “Noted for next time,” I say, turning and walking towards the kitchen. I wave my hand behind me, telling Kace to follow me as I’m transfixed on the bag.

  I rush to the table and remove the contents from the bag. Home-made soup and sandwiches are exactly what I need. I squeal as I sit down and immediately start eating.

  Still hungry after dominating my lunch in minutes, I distract Kace and steal half of his sandwich. He growls as I take a big bite of his lunch and looks like he’s considering eating my hand. This was probably the one and only time I completely ignored his growl and it didn’t turn me on—perhaps my hormones are finally calming down.

  “Not my fault you only brought me one sandwich,” I say as I shamelessly devour his food. “Now you know better for next time.”

  He chuckles and shakes his head, watching me with amusement. I imagine I resemble a wild animal who has just found its first meal in days, but feeding my hunger takes priority over worrying about my appearance. As soon as we finish our lunch, Kace receives a message on his phone.

  “It’s Blaze. He’s here for your training.”

  I shriek with excitement, startling Kace. Shifting yesterday was exhausting, and because of the circumstances, we didn’t spend much time connecting with my beast. The thought of letting my beast out again excites me to no end.

  “We’re training you in human form today,” Kace says, extinguishing my excitement.

  “Why?” I cross my arms over my chest and glare at him. If I were standing right now, I would stomp my feet like a child throwing a tantrum for dramatic effect. He looks at me and chuckles.

  “I know how excited you are to see your beast, but we still have to go over the basics before we work on shifting,” he explains. “Your beast is very powerful. As powerful as our beasts, and maybe even more powerful.”

  I can’t help the huge smile that forms on my face. I have this odd sense of pride in my beast, even though we’ve basically just met.

  “Your beast expresses itself in your human form too and we need to control it there,” he continues. “For example, we know that you ran very fast in human form yesterday. This is an example of something you need to learn to control otherwise you could do it around humans and that could lead to an awkward conversation or worse.”

  I nod, recognising the importance of not exposing our kind to the humans as it would lead to fear and utter chaos.

  Why can’t humans just accept those who are different? Why do they have to fear and destroy that which they don’t understand? Humans suck.

  “Wait, how did you know how fast I was running yesterday?” I ask, squinting my eyes at Kace, who rubs the back of his neck with a sheepish look on his face.

  “Blazewasguardingyouandhefollowedyoutothewaterfall,” he quickly mutters under his breath, avoiding eye contact.

  “Pardon me?” I ask, leaning towards him, my eyes boring holes in his. “Could you please speak up?”

  He sighs and nods slowly. “We were worried about you, so we’ve been taking turns keeping an eye on you.” He looks up at me, scrunching his face as he awaits my reply. I stare at him for a moment, letting him sweat a bit.

  “How long have you been creeping on me?” I ask, wondering if they’ve been taking shifts stalking me since I first met Kace. Blaze and the others didn’t seem to know me when we first met at The Den, but maybe it was all an act.

  “Only since you left my place the other day.” He throws his hands up in surrender. “I swear.”

  I tap my finger on my lips, looking at Kace’s face for any signs he’s lying. His heart rate hasn’t changed, no signs of sweat on his face, his pupils haven’t changed in size, and the muscles around his eyes and lips have not twitched. All signs seem to show he is telling the truth.

  Since when did I become a human lie detector? I can see this coming in handy.

  “Did I pass?” Kace asks with a smirk on his face. “Pretty cool isn’t it?”

  “Yes, and now you’re all screwed because you won’t be able to keep anything from me anymore.” Kace laughs an
d shakes his head.

  “Unfortunately, Kace has trained to pass lie detector tests,” Blaze says from behind me, startling me and causing me to jump in my chair.

  “Jesus, Blaze, don’t scare me like that!” I scrunch the paper bag from our lunch and throw it at him. He catches it with ease and puts it in the recycling bin. “When the hell did you get here?”

  Blaze chuckles. “I arrived while you were busy interrogating Kace.” He leans against the kitchen island, crossing his arms over his chest. “I was hoping you would kick his ass, so I didn’t want to interrupt you.” He winks at me, and I smile and shake my head.

  “So, now that you’re both here,” I say, turning in my chair so I can see both of them. “Thank you for helping me yesterday. I don’t know what would have happened if I shifted like that when I was alone, or worse, in a public area. Although I don’t know how I really feel about you guys stalking me; I’ll have to get back to you on that one.”

  “We’re always here for you, sugar,” Blaze says with a curt nod. “Our job is to make sure all beasts are controlled. Although you’re the first adult I’ve met who hasn’t shifted before. I’m excited to help you become one with your gorgeous beast.”

  “Blaze is right,” Kace says. “This is a new experience for all of us, and we hope that our training and experience will help make this a smooth process for you. Your beast is strong and the fact that you weren’t in excruciating pain during your first shift is encouraging.”

  The scene in front of me is awe-inspiring; Kace and Blaze are actually working together like civil human beings. Not only that, but they are doing so after almost ripping each other’s throats out. Well, it was mostly Kace who was about to do the ripping. It’s good to see they aren’t holding a grudge with each other. I enjoy having them both around, perhaps I enjoy it a little too much though.

  “I honestly don’t remember the shift at all.” I shrug my shoulders. “I heard it and I felt something, but it wasn’t the feeling I expected of my entire body reshaping itself—muscles, bones, skin, and all. I was more attuned to the emotional pain at that moment, particularly the anger and fear. It was a disastrous mess of my emotions mixed with your emotions.”

  “Our emotions?” Kace furrows his brow. “What do you mean our emotions?”

  “I’m not really sure how to describe it.” I chew on my lip, contemplating how to explain the experience. “It was beyond sympathising with what you two were feeling and understanding what you were thinking. It was empathy on steroids, as if I turned into an Empath. For example, I could feel your anger, Kace. It felt different from my own anger and I knew it wasn’t coming from me, but at the same time it was as if it was. I could also feel Blaze’s fear, he wasn’t afraid for himself, he was afraid for me.”

  “Interesting. Do you feel our emotions now, sugar?” Blaze asks, grabbing an apple from the fruit basket on the counter and taking a big bite.

  I focus on Kace first. He looks calm and curious. I focus harder, trying to sense his emotions like the other day. Nothing. I turn and focus on Blaze. He seems to enjoy the apple, but that’s just based on observations and assumptions; I don’t feel his pleasure.

  “No,” I conclude. “Maybe it only happens during intense emotional situations. That seems to be the criteria for most things in the mysterious world of beasts. I’m glad I can’t feel it all the time, being an Empath would be exhausting.”

  Kace nods, and Blaze raises his apple in the air and tips his head in agreement. We continue chatting for a few minutes about Empaths in movies and tv shows before getting into a discussion about my training.

  Blaze will help me work on my senses today since he has exceptionally developed senses. He’ll show me how to tap into my beast’s sensory system while I’m in human form. With practice, I’ll also be able to do this in my beast form. This will give me the ability to combine my human senses with my beast senses to optimise all of my senses regardless of which form I’m in.

  Once we have a game plan, Kace excuses himself to go take care of some business and Blaze and I go to the backyard where we can properly test my senses.

  “Let the training begin!” I shout excitedly as I run out into the backyard.

  I zip around the yard like a child who was given unsupervised access to a candy store.

  “Easy there, sugar,” Blaze says while shaking his head and chuckling. “First, we need to get base scores by looking at what your human senses can do.”

  I turn to pout at him and in classic Whoopsie form I trip over my own feet, landing on the grass with a thud. I curse under my breath as Blaze laughs. I jump back to my feet and walk over to him, wiping the dirt off my pants on the way.

  He begins by testing my vision, starting with visual acuity. Taking a small notepad out of his pocket, he walks a few feet out into the yard. He turns towards me and holds the notepad up, asking me to read the words on the page. I do, and he takes a few steps back. This continues until I can no longer read the words in the notebook. My visual acuity should be better in human form than in beast form.

  Next, he tests my peripheral vision. He places a mark on the ground where I’m standing and then walks behind me. He tells me to look straight ahead and to shout stop as soon as I can see him out of the corner of my eye. Then he walks to my left side. I shout as soon as he appears in my peripheral vision and he places a mark on the ground. We then do the same thing for the right side. My peripheral vision will be better when in beast form. To get the benefit of improved peripheral vision while in human form, I’ll need to partially shift into my beast’s eyes. The shift will be slight enough to not be noticeable by others.

  The third visual test is the ability to see in low-light situations. For this he puts glasses on me, each pair slightly darker than the last. He shows me words in the notebook again and makes a note of when I stop being able to read the words. My beast’s eyes will have better vision in low-light situations than my human eyes.

  There are other visual tests we’ll try next time, but these were a good place to start. Next up, we test my auditory abilities. Blaze uses an app on his phone to play different tones, and I raise my hand each time I hear a tone. My beast should be able to detect different frequencies and volumes than I can in human form.

  We follow-up the auditory testing with olfactory testing. In this test, Blaze asks me to smell various vials of solutions. For the first part of this test, I let Blaze know if I can smell anything from each of the vials. In the second part of this test, he has me follow my nose to the vials after he hides them around the yard. This is another task that my beast will outperform my human form on.

  Once we have the baseline information, we repeat the tests—this time with my beast helping. Although these tests wouldn’t meet the criteria for official sensory testing, they are handy tools for our purposes.

  Blaze steps in front of me. “Close your eyes. Clear your mind from everything. Now, focus on your beast. Think about the animal you saw in the water the other day and nothing else.”

  I take my mind back to the waterfall. I get distracted thinking about my moment with Blaze, and my cheeks blush.

  “Sugar, I know you aren’t thinking about your beast right now,” Blaze teases, letting me know he can smell my arousal. “As much as I appreciate your continued excitement about our encounter, we both need to stay focussed. We can reminisce about our time in the woods together later and perhaps finish what we started.”

  “Ass,” I mutter without opening my eyes. I don’t need to see his face to know he’s sporting a self-satisfied smile. I won’t give him the pleasure of a response to his suggestion.

  I focus again on the face in the water. It’s so beautiful. I am beautiful. It’s easy to think of my beast as something else, but it isn’t something else—it’s me. A much larger, hairier, and toothier version of me. The first step in this process is accepting your beast. By having a neutral or positive association with my beast, I won’t fight against shifting. Knowing I control my body an
d I choose to or not to shift will reduce the risk of accidental shifts, like the other day.

  “Good, now keep thinking about your beast and open your eyes,” Blaze commands. He tells me to think about how things feel when they change. For example, how my eyes felt when they changed colour. Self-awareness and the mind-body connection are fundamental in controlling our beasts.

  We repeat all the previous sensory tests again. Sometimes we repeat a test more than once, as Blaze instructs me on how to shift enough to access the extra sensory abilities without leading me into a full shift. The easiest way to think about it is to picture it as a balance scale, where if I add too much beast or add it too fast, I can tip the scales too far causing me to shift into my beast. But if I don’t add enough, I won’t see any real changes. He says this is something I should practice every day to build up my confidence and ability to find the right amount of beast needed to optimise each of my senses. We also make plans for the next steps in the sensory training, including tracking animals in the forest, which I’m quite excited about.

  “I’m proud of you, sugar,” Blaze coos, and I smile proudly. “Most pups take a while to learn as much control as you’ve already shown.”

  “I have my parents to thank for that.” I smile as I think about my parents. “They always taught me to control my emotions—not ignore or hide them, but feel, accept, and manage them. They also made sure I took care of my body and mind and learned how the two can work well together or work against each other.”

  “You have great parents, Sie,” he says with a hint of sadness in his voice. “You’re lucky to have them.”

  He’s right, I am lucky. His words make me feel bad for how I’ve treated them lately, even though I know they understand. No matter what happens between us, we’ll always come back to each other. That’s what family does. Or at least that is what our family does. Not every family has a bond like ours, Blaze is a prime example of that. I can’t help but wonder how different Blaze would be and what his life would be like if he had a family like mine. I walk over to Blaze and embrace him in a tight hug.