by Dawn Steele
“There was kind of a vibe in the room,” Jake says, deadpan, “but we managed to keep the lid on the chest. It was sort of rumbling and quaking all night, like something was trying to come out of it.”
Jeff seems nonplussed at the mention of ‘rumbling’ and ‘quaking’, but Cassie hides a smile. Mika gives Jake a funny, lopsided grin.
“You’re all right for an old guy,” she says. “I might decide to have a crush on you.”
“Sorry, I’m taken.” Jake flashes the faux ring on his finger. He catches Terry’s eyes, and she narrows them, half-smiling. He remembers the really wet dream he had last night and how prominently Terry featured in it. Even looking at Terry now, he can feel his cock stirring at the dream sight of her naked heaving breasts and the little triangle between her legs.
Okayyyy, don’t go there.
After breakfast, Peter stands up and claps his hands for everyone’s attention.
“And now we will adjourn to the forest. We have a lineup of fun and games for everyone. More often than not in today’s world, we lose sight of our shifter roots – where our forefathers came from, how they used to live. We are all in a rat race of our own making. In fact, we have become almost more civilized than the humans we once warred with.”
Laughter all round. Jake can’t honestly say Peter is wrong.
“I want to remind us all of our shifter heritage. My great-grandfather, Lucius, lived in the wilds of Scandinavia. He was the alpha of his pack, and he took my great-grandmother as mate. They interacted with humans only sparingly as those were the days where the humans still hunted us as wolves. But they were damned tough, not soft and pretty like the wolves today.”
Peter pauses and casts a significant glance at Jake, Jeff and Mariko.
“Let’s see what stuff we are made of, shall we?”
Uh oh, Jake thinks.
When was the last time he shifted? When was the last time he even ran in a forest in his wolf form, sleek and free and true?
God, I’m so domesticated!
Jeff grins. He flexes his muscles, and Jake can just tell this is a wolf used to his primal state. Great. Just great.
Jeff says, “Bring them on, Peter. I’m ready.”
*
They are all gathered at the edge of the forest. The air is crisp and fresh here so close to the ocean. The salt tang from the sea merges with the leafy smells of the foliage. Birds chirp unseen on branches, and Jake feels invigorated despite his trepidation.
So this is Peter’s game. To pit the three of them against one another in a physical contest involving shifter dynamics and goodness knows what else.
“Did we dress right?” Terry asks anxiously.
“You don’t need to dress right. We’re shifters,” Mika says.
Terry gasps as she steals a look at Jake. “You mean, we have to go n- ”
“Well, yeah. What did you think?”
As the master of ceremonies for the day, Peter says to the gathered throng, “These are the rules of the game. Somewhere in that forest is a hare inside a gilded cage. You may choose to shift into your animal forms or remain in your human ones. But since this is a contest of speed, agility, tracking ability and strength, you would need to choose your forms wisely.”
Speed, agility, tracking ability and strength. Those were the modalities Jake could apply in his teenage years when he was a marathon runner. But now? When he hadn’t run in years?
“A hair?” Mika asks her grandfather, wrinkling her nose.
“Hare, Mika. As in large rabbit. And if you took those plugs out of your ears, you might be able to hear better.”
Mika scowls, but does not pull her earphones out.
Peter continues. “You come in pairs, mostly. In this contest, only one of you in a pair may participate. But this means the other one who has chosen to sit out on this contest will have to participate in the next one, yet undisclosed, which may or may not prove to be a more difficult task.”
Jake and Terry exchange wary glances.
“What do we have to do, Mr. Skaarsgard?” asks Mariko. “Eat the hare?”
Jake feels his stomach going queasy already at the anticipated blood lust. OK, it has been a long time since he had eaten anything raw. It has been a long time since he had done anything remotely wolf-like. Peter is right. They are becoming too civilized – too divorced from their birthrights.
Peter says, “It is equally essential for shifters to maintain self-control. So we don’t want you to devour the hare, but to merely bring the animal to us – freed from its cage. Alive.”
Jake’s eyes bug out at that. A wolf and a live hare? No way the latter can be kept alive. You will have to have incredible self-control.
“The first contestant to return here with the live hare wins the first round.” Peter beams. But it is obvious to Jake that he fully expects the three of them to participate, and the winner of this entire contest will be the one to get the coveted Skaarsgard job as Head of Advertising.
He has to win at all costs.
“Who am I going to pair up with, Grandpa?” Mika demands.
“You can pair up with your aunt Ethel.”
Mika scrunches her nose. “Ewww, what if she makes a pass at me?”
Her mother cuffs her gently on the side of the head. “Don’t be rude, Mika. Apologize to your aunt Ethel,”
“It’s OK,” Ethel says airily, “I’m used to being stomped upon by everybody anyway.”
Jake meets her eyes and gives her a rueful smile. She smiles back. Yeah, I get a lot of flak for being a lezzie.
The couples start to strategize in their own little spaces.
“You have to do it,” Terry says to Jake, out of everyone else’s earshot.
“I know. But what if you get something more difficult later on?”
“We’ll come to that later. How are you at scenting prey?” she says. “This is Peter’s ploy, right? That’s why he brought all of you here . . . to test you.”
“I was expecting a Myers-Brigg personality profile.”
“Maybe that will be the second test.”
“Some hope,” he laughs wryly. Still, he is glad that she seems invested in his fate, whether or not she realizes she is giving out the vibes.
At the end of five minutes, every couple has chosen a champion. The contestants are Karl, Thom, Halder, Ethel, Jeff, Jake and Mariko.
“We’ll be starting soon on the count of ten,” Peter announces. “When the first one of you finds the hare and brings it back here, Martha will shoot her gun into the air and sound everyone to come back.”
Martha waves her shotgun. She looks funny toting it with her cheery apple cheeks and momsy demeanor.
Everyone begins to shed their clothes. Obviously, everyone is of like mind in deciding that their shifter forms will be more competitive in this race. Jake sees Terry blushing as he peels off his T-shirt and slips off his jeans. When he takes off his underwear, she averts her eyes.
“Terry,” he hisses, “we’re supposed to be married, remember? You’re supposed to have seen it all – several times a night!”
“Oh, right.” Terry turns her gaze back to his genitals. Her face is crimson.
“Try not to blush.”
“OK.”
“You’re still blushing.”
“I can’t help it, OK? It’s an automatic reflex.”
Now that she is staring at his penis, her eyes seem glued to it. Jake observes Jeff watching them with a knowing smirk. And oh shit, but his cock is stirring again at the thought and sight of Terry inspecting it.
“Can’t keep it down, Savage?” Jeff calls.
Jake looks down, and is stymied to see his cock rising. It did always have a mind of its own, and nothing he can psychologically do to keep it down. Now he’s going to be just as embarrassed as Terry. She is going to think he’s some sort of perv. It has nothing to do with you, OK? he wants to tell her. If any beautiful woman is going to stare long and hard at my cock, it’s going to react in the same
way.
“Kiss me,” he says to her urgently.
“Huh?”
“Kiss me,” he whispers. “Jeff is getting suspicious.”
Terry turns to glance at Jeff, but Jake quickly grabs her face and plants a passionate kiss on her surprised lips. A deep shudder immediately flows through his body, terminating uncomfortably in his groin. Unfortunately, his cock reacts violently. Violently hard, that is. Terry’s lips are soft and warm and he can taste her pink lipstick.
This is not how I wanted our first kiss to be – with me naked and in full view of everyone, including my potential new employer, and with a hard-on to rival a convict who has been jailed for twenty years.
Her arms creep around his neck, and she is kissing him back. To his amazement, she is very into the moment as well. Her lips part and she lets his tongue into her mouth. She tastes wet and sweet and oh-so-hot, and his cock is so hard now that it feels like it would burst out of its skin. Her breasts are firm against his bare chest and the warmth of her body renders him hyperaware of her presence and beauty and vigor.
God, but how he wants and needs her! It’s just not about him needing any woman. He wants Terry. He is sure of it. He wants to explore her mind and every crevice and curve of her body. He wants to see where this would lead, and he is super-excited about the possibilities.
He has read his shifter lore, but thought that it would no longer be applicable in today’s shifter world, and especially not to him. But it is happening right here, right now! He can’t be sure of all its signs, just as any man can’t be sure if he is really falling in love – but there’s something there, definitely.
In the olden days, a shifter would experience The Calling. You would know the signs telling you that she is your Mate, the one you are meant to be with. It applies more to alphas, but every shifter male experiences it in variable ways. Humans call it ‘falling in love with The One’. Was that how he reacted when he first saw Terry in the hallway the very first day she moved into his apartment building? Had he already known but possibly misread all the signs?
His epiphany is brought to an abrupt halt by Peter’s voice:
“Hey, you two, you can make out later. Starting the countdown here.”
Jake breaks off the kiss. Terry’s beautiful face is extremely flushed and flustered. She licks her lower lip in a profoundly shaken way.
“We’ll continue this afterwards,” he whispers to her.
She nods. Her pupils are very dilated and her lips are slightly parted in that way he finds so desirable.
Now how is he going to shift with a full-on chubby like this?
“Ten – ”
The chosen contestants all take their positions. They are all naked now. Jake observes Jeff’s muscular body. Not an ounce of spare fat on him, for certain. Mariko has small pert breasts and very graceful legs.
“Good luck!” Terry calls to Jake.
He smiles at her, and when she smiles back, her eyes are lighted up.
“Nine.”
Some of them start to shift. Jake enacts his subconscious will, and his body responds. He can feel his bones compacting and lengthening, his muscles becoming taut and tight, his nose and mouth elongating into a snout. Even his skin texture feels rougher as the hair starts to sprout everywhere. His teeth sharpen and lengthen, and his vision becomes tinged with red. His sense of smell broadens, and all his other senses become hyper-acute.
“Eight.”
He feels more alive and invigorated than ever. The blood pulses in his veins and his heart beats within his chest like a primal drum. The power courses through the fibers on his legs.
“Seven.”
Yesss. It feels so good. Why doesn’t he do this more often? He remembers the stories of the truly feral shifters wishing to remain in their shifter forms and becoming animal. And every time he is in this form, he understands why.
“Six. Five. Four.”
He glances at the rest. They have all shifted to their wolf forms. Jeff has become a very dark lupine – almost black. Jake’s own color is a golden red. Mariko is a beautiful grey and white wolf.
“Three.”
Jeff paws at the ground and growls.
“Two. One.”
And they are off.
Jeff’s powerful muscles bunch and he is off on a tangent, clearly getting a head start on the rest of them. The others race after him. They either believe he’s on to a lead, or they have caught whiff of life from the same direction.
Jake doesn’t believe in being a follower. If the hare is in that direction – and he has absolutely no clue that it will be – Jeff would have gotten there first. But if it isn’t . . .
Jake dives into the forest in a different direction from the rest. The path he takes is not trodden as yet. But he is driven by his instincts. He senses life in the undergrowth, but none of which he is seeking. His now superior instincts allow him to register simultaneous movements – the darting of a squirrel up the bark of a tree, the flutter of a crow’s wings.
His paws scrape the leaf-strewn ground as his muzzle rises to catch scents and odors flung by the wind.
The hare could be anywhere. Anywhere at all.
Where would Peter hide it?
Jake’s sharp ears can pick out the thundering of paws in the near distance as the wolves fan off in different paths.
If he were Peter, he wouldn’t make it obvious at all.
No way.
His premonition tells him to go east, where the scent of fresh water assails his flared nostrils.
10
Finding a hare in a cage in this forest is like trying to find a needle in a particularly messy haystack.
Jake has been on the prowl for about half an hour now. His ears are pricked for the sound of Martha’s shotgun, but it hasn’t sounded yet. Little furry animals prowl the undergrowth – woodchucks and rabbits and other rodents.
The scent of fresh water still guides him. He doesn’t quite know why he is so drawn to it. If there is an unlikely place for a hare in a gilded cage . . .
But that is just it, isn’t it? It is an unlikely place. Everyone else would think of searching the trees or roots or behind boulders, if there are any. But near water?
The trees grow sparse, until they finally terminate at the banks of a pond.
Jake stops short.
The pond is fairly large and extremely tranquil. Its surface mirrors the trees and sky, and so the water is green and azure and dappled by only the occasional ripples from a frog’s movements. Dragonflies buzz above it, creating a tapestry of gentle noise. The air is redolent with water scents.
Jake does not smell any mammal nearby but he sees the boat drifting in the middle of the pond, anchored to remain where it is. And in that boat is the top of what looks to be a golden cage – almost fairytale-like in its presentation.
The hare is almost certain to be in it.
But no one can unmistakably scent it because it is masked by water. Jake marvels at the craftiness of the setup.
He hears rather than smells the approach of the other wolf before it appears. On the other side of the banks, Jeff’s black wolf crashes through the tangle of growth and perches at the edge of the pond. He sees both the boat and Jake simultaneously.
Jake doesn’t hesitate. He plunges into the water, as does Jeff.
Jake can swim fairly well in his wolf form, but he has to make a decision now. A human’s body possesses longer legs and a more buoyant body for swimming. His mind registers this fact and his body makes the subconscious shift into his human form again. His bone structure stretches and his skull compresses, the bones shifting and sliding in a way that scientists have long failed to truly comprehend and replicate in shifter labs.
It is his human form which reaches the boat first, and his human hands which grab the side of the boat. The boat lurches and lists, and the cage slides towards Jake. Great. He grasps it by its slim bars. The wriggling hare casts frightened red eyes at him. It is an albino.
Fr
om the other side of the boat, the black wolf leaps out of the water in a silvery trail of drops. The hare shrieks. But the wolf springs right for Jake’s throat instead. In that split second, he understands what Jeff is about to do. The shift comes to him as naturally as breathing. It is his wolf form that meets Jeff’s attacking wolf head on.
Jeff’s teeth gnash at his throat, and Jake fights back. With snapping jaws and flailing limbs, they both crash into the water.
You’ve got to be kidding me, Jake thinks. Jeff is carrying this a bit too far. But he has to fight for his very survival because he doesn’t know how far Jeff in his wolf form will go. Some shifters tend to be extremely feral in their animal forms. It comes with the natural glandular secretions which course through a lupine’s body. Jake has always gotten a good handle on his wolf alter, but he can’t be sure about others – especially a former alpha challenger like Jeff.
It is all he can do to hold Jeff back, but he has to. Jeff seems to be on a mission to draw blood. The water splashes around them, creating quite a disturbance, and they both keep plunging below the surface as they wrestle with each other. Water fills Jake’s muzzle. Limbs claw and teeth gnash.
Jake feels a rip on his side and he reciprocates by nipping Jeff on the leg. He is gratified to hear the other werewolf howl.
A splash on his left alerts him. The boat has overturned and the cage with the hare has fallen into the water.
Oh shit!
Jake immediately tears himself away from his opponent and dives for the cage. The hare will drown if he doesn’t do something. His wolf form isn’t exactly the best for grabbing cages, and so he shifts back to his human form, a feat which comes to him as easily as breathing air now. He grabs the sinking cage and the struggling hare within it.
Teeth sink into his right leg, but he kicks the muzzle that comes with them away.
Jake’s human fingers claw at the cage. The trap springs free and the poor drowning hare swims out. Jake makes a grab for it despite another assault on his leg by Jeff, and catches the hare by its ears. With powerful strokes, he surfaces, gasping and holding up the hare.