by Mandy Rosko
God, his body was solid.
He could be on the cover of a magazine.
And she had him all to herself.
His body heat spiked. Trisha felt it, and her body responded in kind, even with the relatively cooler outdoor air.
Warren cleared his throat and took a step back. "Well, it's different for everyone. I'm a wolf. I like to run. To hunt. Going out and doing that from time to time always feels nice."
Something occurred to her in that moment, and Trisha laughed nervously, backing off. "Uh, your wolf doesn't like eating raccoons, does he?"
He grinned, and his teeth looked sharper than what she was used to. "It might."
Great. Now he was all about the jokes.
"Seriously, though?"
"I prefer not to go after the scavenging animals if that makes you feel better."
"I'm suddenly reminded of why shifters need to have a proper source for where their meat comes from."
"Fine, I will swear off raccoons from here on out, even though I've never eaten one. Feel better?"
She did, oddly enough. "Yeah. I guess it would be hard for some animal to come and take me out when I've got my horn." It always annoyed her, but now that she knew she had to worry about being hunted by larger animals, she was suddenly glad to have it.
"Going to skewer anything that comes at you, are you?"
"You bet your ass I will, especially if it's got big teeth, so you watch your ass, mister." She couldn't seem to stop embarrassing herself. God, a handsome-as-hell man shouldn't be enough to scramble her brains like this! Trisha clapped her hands together, surveying the scene before her in the half-moon. "All right, so what do you want to do?" When she glanced to the side again, she was stunned to see Warren had shifted.
Sort of.
He was still on two legs, still wearing clothes, but his face, his entire head, looked a lot more...wolfish with long, pointed ears perking up to the sky and everything. Wolf's hair seemed to burst out of the neck of his leather jacket like a weed that had been left unattended for too long. His hands had changed, too. He still had five fingers and a thumb, but there were claws now, and his fingers seemed a little stubbier, with black padding at the bottom.
"Whoa."
"Does it concern you?"
She blinked, nearly falling back a step. "Uh, no, but hearing you talk like that definitely sounds different than what I thought it would sound like."
He smiled at her. Strange that he could keep smiling even in that form and she could recognize it.
"What did you think I would sound like?"
"Well, not as much like...you. I guess I thought it would sound a lot more...scratchy? Am I insulting you?"
He raised a bushy brow at her. So strange seeing a wolf raise an eyebrow. "Since when are you worried about insulting people?"
"Hey! I try not to insult people."
Warren said nothing. He just kept right on looking at her with that same stare.
"Whatever, I don't try to insult people. Are you going to show me how you have fun when you're running around or what?"
"I will. Are you going to shift?"
Shit. She totally forgot about that.
"I need to...get out of my clothes, right?"
"No, not if it's uncomfortable for you. If you're able, you can shift partway, like I did. If you can't, then you don't need to shift at all. We can run around till your heart's content, and it will mostly be the same thing."
She didn't want mostly. She wanted to let her wilder side loose.
Then maybe she could sleep all the way through the night without the urge to run around through the school.
Or the woods.
Actually, this seemed like a great opportunity.
"You know what? I think I want to shift all the way."
She reached down to the hem of her oversized T-shirt and pulled it up and over her head, getting it only a little caught on her horn before she was able to toss it away. Warren didn't look at her as she unclasped her bra and shoved down her leggings, kicking off her shoes so she could peel them off each leg.
Standing bare naked next to a giant wolf-man was oddly...freeing. Something inside her came to life, and it felt as though she could do anything, as though she could be anyone.
"I want to run." She didn't wait for Warren to answer. He might have shouted something behind her, but she couldn't be sure. All she knew was the grass was soft on her feet, the night air smelled amazing, the moonlight made everything shine, and she needed to be a part of it.
So excited to be running wild and free, she forgot to shift and was caught completely off guard when she smacked her face hard on a tree branch.
She was flipped down onto her back, in all her naked human-flesh glory, the air punched from her lungs.
8
So much for being wild and free. I really need to get faster at my shifting…
As her vision swirled, she made out the blur of purple lilacs appearing to her right. She hadn't seen them somehow. Had it really been that dark? Trisha blinked a couple of times as they came into focus. The lilac bush was growing around the tree she'd smacked into.
God, how excited was she to go running that she hadn't noticed those flowers? They were perfectly in bloom.
She could hear Warren's footsteps crunching in the gravel and dry leaves before his upside-down head appeared above her. There were multiple heads.
She squinted, waiting for the four or five heads to turn into one.
He was back in his fully human shape, and he was actually smiling at her. "Didn't shift fast enough, did you?"
She raised a finger up at him. "If you ever tell anyone I did that, I'll never speak to you again."
He barked a laugh, coming to stand next to her, and he offered her his hand. "Don't worry. You are safe."
She looked at his hand, suspicious, but she took it anyway because there was a twig jabbing her in a very inappropriate spot, and it was really starting to hurt.
Of course, he had the strength of a bull, and as he pulled her up with little effort, Trisha's equilibrium wobbled. She practically fell against his chest, her naked skin rubbing against the coarse material of his shirt. She refused to look up at him, not wanting him to see how vulnerable she felt, her ego, and possibly her head, freshly bruised.
"Thanks," she said. "God, you're solid."
It was a little too easy to rest her cheek on his chest as if she was getting ready to have a nap outside.
Warren cleared his throat. "I can take you back if you're not feeling well."
"Leave me right here." She sighed. "This feels great."
Something occurred to her in that moment, and she shoved herself away from him. "I mean, not if you don't want me there, because I'm not desperate or anything, and if you're not up for having a new shifter with a stabby-looking horn leaning all over you, then you don't have to—"
He moved fast. He leaned in, dodging his head around the horn, and planted a swift kiss on her lips before he pulled back.
She blinked. That cliche of time stopping and the earth not moving actually happened.
Then time started up again, and she couldn't believe that had just happened. She laughed nervously, excited and disbelieving at the same time.
She felt...like a teenager. Giddy.
"I didn't think you were going to do that." Warmth filled up her belly. "You seem so serious, and Cindy and I were talking, and we thought for sure you wouldn't make a move because of your position."
That was the wrong thing to say. His calm expression turned to one of mild panic as his brows shot up.
"You're right. I shouldn't have done that."
"What? No! No, no, no, that's not what I meant."
"Too late, we should go."
She reached out and grabbed his wrist as he turned. "Wait, come on. We don't have to go back. We can talk about this. It was just a little kiss, and I liked it."
He looked at her, pulling his hand from her grasp. "I didn't mean go back to the
academy. I meant that we should just keep going if you wanted to run around for a while."
"Oh." She dropped her hands, which had still been kind of reaching out for him. "Right. Okay, that's good. But just so you know, it's fine that you kissed me."
"No, it wasn't. Now come on before I change my mind."
Shit. Why did she have to go and open her big mouth?
He shifted, and with nothing else to do but stick close, she followed him, this time shifting into her raccoon before taking off into the woods.
For a while, it didn't seem as if they were actually going anywhere. It seemed more like they were just enjoying a nice nighttime stroll through the woods.
As strange as that was on its own, eventually, despite the awkwardness suddenly between them, Trisha found herself enjoying it. That same feeling that had compelled her to run out into the trees in the first place had come back, only now, the pain on her face kept the part of her that wanted to run in line, which allowed her to simply enjoy the night air, the smell of the bark and grass as well as new leaves and the older ones that had fallen just before last winter.
She took in a deep breath, held it, and then let it out, as though it was the first fresh air she'd had in her entire life.
"Nice, isn't it?"
Trisha jumped a little as Warren spoke. They had both gone so quiet that the sound had startled her. She hadn't even seen him shift into his human form.
It was too dark for her to make out any features of his naked body, much to her disappointment, but it did allow her to shift into her human form and not worry about distracting nudity. "Is this what it feels like for you? This sense of...belonging?"
That was stupid. That didn't make sense. There was no way he would understand what she meant, and she was clearly making this out to be—
"Yes, it does."
Yes!
She couldn't explain why it made her so happy that they shared this, other than she was totally into him, but aside from that, it seemed important that he immediately knew what she meant without her having to explain it.
"Do you ever get the urge to just...go running in the woods?"
He glanced back at her, and that calm half-smile of his came back. "All the time."
She could have squealed a little.
Yeah, she was definitely feeling like a teenager. She only wished she remembered what she had actually been like as a teenager. "I bet you don't hurl yourself into trees, though."
"Don’t worry. You'll find yourself soon enough. You're new at this," Warren said. "It only makes sense you would smack yourself on a tree the first time you ran by one."
Okay, now she was a little embarrassed again. "Have you ever done that?"
"When I was a little kid, a couple of times, yeah. You find your footing eventually, then you practically fly through the woods."
Trisha looked around at the many birch and pine trees all around her. She could almost picture herself flying through the woods, though she doubted she would be as graceful as she imagined, or as sleek as a wolf, but raccoons could still climb these trees, right? She could still have lots of fun. It was enough to make her giddy all over again.
Calm down. Don't go running off. You don't want to get smacked in the face again.
"I'm starting to think it wasn't such a good idea that I was turned into a shifter."
Warren made a noncommittal noise.
She knew what that was about. No one on staff wanted to talk to her, or anyone else who had been changed, about the whys of what happened, or if they did, it was just those same vague grunting noises, neither agreeing nor disagreeing. Offering no answers while pretending they had some.
She was tired of it.
"Do you know why we were changed?"
"I'm not in their science division. I'm little more than a bodyguard they brought in for the extra security." He looked down at her. Maybe he could see it in her face that she knew he was full of shit, or he changed his mind on his own, but Warren sighed. "But there is a theory about it."
"Great, let's hear it."
He didn't say anything. That annoyed her.
"Warren, come on."
"You're asking me for answers I'm only vaguely aware of. I'm not the one investigating this."
"Right, and I'm not the one who gives a shit. I don't care if you only sort of know what's going on. I just want an idea. It won't crush me if it turns out you're wrong."
"It might crush some of the others." Warren looked at her, but there was nothing soft in his eyes anymore. "You've seen how some of the others look. They might never be able to go out in public as they are ever again. You're lucky to only have that jutting out from the middle of your forehead."
Trisha pressed her lips together, thinking about Cindy, who—try as she might to acclimate to a waterless environment—would always need to stay close to large bodies of water.
Then there was TJ, stuck with his new huge and curved teeth. Cindy spent time at the academy lake with him, since both were a type of fish shifter, and she'd learned that, despite the toothy smile, he was actually a really great, super-nice guy.
But he'd likely never be able to walk down the street without drawing attention to himself. People might think he was born with a deformity, might not think it had anything to do with the paranormal or know what had actually happened to him, but he would always get stares, even from the most well-meaning of people.
Warren sighed. "Has anyone told you about Mastermind, yet?"
"The crazy lady who experimented on other shifters because she wanted to get bigger? Yeah, I've heard of her. The scientists and goons mentioned her here and there at the lab. She was a hamster or something, right?"
He was smiling again; that was a good thing. "Or something." Warren rubbed at his jaw. He was clearly struggling with this, with telling her, but Trisha was desperate to know.
"I won't tell anyone else what you or the doctors here are thinking, and I won't get you in trouble either. I swear."
"I'm not worried about getting in trouble." He looked at her as though she were crazy.
Trisha shrugged. "Either way, I just want an idea. I promise I won't cling to it religiously if it turns out the scientists here are wrong."
He looked her up and down then sighed and rolled his eyes. "Right, well, I suppose they're going to let you all in on this sooner or later."
"Exactly, you're only preparing me for what they might say."
"Keep in mind this is all speculation and could have nothing to do with the outcome."
Trisha nodded. She didn't care if it turned out whatever theory the FUC agents were floating around was wrong. She didn't care about how much it might hurt her to know. She just wanted to know something.
"The basic premise is that we can't hide forever," Warren started. "It's getting harder and harder with social media, and we can only rely on people blaming fake news for so long."
"Uh-huh."
"Right." Warren stuffed his hands into his pockets. "Some shifters are speculating that changing human beings into shifters would swell our numbers. That if they flood the world with new shifters, the council and agencies like FUC wouldn't be able to suppress the information anymore."
Trisha let her brain marinate on that for a bit. "So, you're saying the people who took me and experimented on me...what? They think they're the good guys?"
"That's more difficult to say. Everyone thinks they're the exception to the rule whenever they do bad shit. Everyone excuses themselves for being terrible, violent, or threatening because their intentions are noble." He looked like he wanted to add more to that, but he altered course a little. "You know who was the ring leader of your lab, right?"
"The ex-Mrs. Jones..." It was impossible not to know. Her goons and scientists sang her praises, and it was only when FUC, assisted by her own sons, the Australian Jones Brother kangaroo shifters, took her down that Trisha and the others were rescued from the lab. Which turned out to have been pretty close to the Academy.
&nbs
p; Trisha couldn't remember what her life was like before being changed, but she did remember being locked up. She remembered the electric bars, getting slapped around whenever she didn't do as she was told or mouthed off too much. She could remember being put onto a table, strapped down and naked while needles poked into her wrists, neck, and head.
All at the behest of Mrs. Jones.
She didn't want to think about what else might have been going on while she was out of it, but somehow, she’d managed to keep her head up. They hadn't broken her, and then she was saved along with everyone else.
Everyone else who was still getting used to their new forms, who had to learn how to control themselves before they could go back out into society again.
Many would never get that chance.
"We could still be wrong about their motivation. This isn't concrete. Just because the woman said one thing doesn't mean she isn't up to something else underneath it."
"But it's something you guys were thinking about." And just like that, it clicked.
Holy shit.
"You guys were thinking about it because the scientists here are thinking about doing it."
"Not us. I mean, not FUC. But when I'm not doing security, I work as a private investigator, and there are other groups out there, too many groups out there, who are doing shit like this."
"And are you stopping them?" Trisha couldn't believe she was hearing this at all. She couldn't believe she was right about it.
"If only it were that easy. They're starting to run campaigns to get other shifters to support their cause. Saying that the idea will be that, once they know how to really do it, it might be helpful to shifters who aren't comfortable being what they are."
"So, just change it?"
"If the hamster shifter doesn't want to be terrified of getting eaten by a snake every time they shift but, instead, would rather be an owl, then why not?"
That sounded a little too reasonable, and that made her even angrier. She couldn't entirely explain why, but she just knew it inside herself that it was still wrong, it was still messed up, and she hated it with everything inside her that this was something some shifters were looking into.