by Lauren Esker
"It's really just luck," Kathryn said. "She had to stop taking on kids for awhile, but she just got cleared again, so she doesn't have any at all right now. When I let her know we had four ready for placing right now, she was delighted."
"And—she understands these kids are ... special needs, right?" Her caseworkers, Kathryn and Mike, were both in on the shifter secret, but they were always a bit careful talking about it over the phone.
"She knows, and she's fine with that. Don't worry."
"Thank you, Kathryn. That's amazing. You're amazing."
She hung up and threw her arms around Avery. He made a startled noise before tentatively hugging her back. "Good news?" he asked, muffled.
"The best! That was one of my caseworkers. She's found a foster home for the kids already. They can move in tomorrow night."
"That's great," Avery said, his voice strained.
Nicole pulled back and looked at him, surprised. "I thought you'd be delighted. This must be a terrible imposition on you."
"I know." He leaned back on the couch, and ran a hand over his face, pushing back the dark forelock that tended to want to flop over his forehead. "Casey warned me, and I didn't listen."
"Who's Casey?"
"A friend. Who knows me better than I know myself, apparently. You know, Nicole, being realistic about it, I understand all the many, many reasons why this is temporary. Why it has to be temporary. These kids have a family out there somewhere. Even if they didn't, there's no way I can take care of four kids and still do my job. I understand that." He smiled lopsidedly, and it was so sad it broke her heart. "But it's been kinda nice having them around."
"I don't understand," she said carefully, sensing she'd stumbled into some private heartbreak of his, something she'd barely begun to scratch the surface of. "If you want to be a foster parent, you could go through the approval process. It might be difficult for you, as a single person with a full-time job, but other people have done it before."
"No," he said, almost angrily, but still with that undercurrent of dark sorrow that she couldn't quite fathom. "No, it isn't that. It's these kids, wolf kids, it's ... let it go, Nicole. I'm going to have to."
She didn't want to. But the puppies themselves provided a distraction. The phone call had woken them from their food coma, and they woke up recharged. Now they were chasing each other around the room, accidentally skidding into walls and tumbling end-over-end with little squeaky yips.
Someone knocked on the door. "Mr. Hollen?" a voice called.
"Shit," Avery muttered. He scrambled stiffly to his feet. "Neighbors. Take them to the bedroom, quick."
"No pets allowed?" Nicole guessed, helping him herd the puppies through the bedroom door.
"No, and they aren't exactly subtle, in case you hadn't noticed." He pulled the door closed, and Nicole realized belatedly that she'd just been shut in the bedroom along with the puppies.
In Avery's bedroom.
Undaunted, the puppies toddled off to find something interesting to do, vanishing into the shadows cloaking the room. It was dark; Avery hadn't turned on a light, so the room was striped with street light coming in through the blinds. Nicole weighed the relative merits of tipping the neighbor off to her presence, versus accidentally stepping on a puppy or losing one, and decided she needed light. She felt her way through the dark room, barking her shin on something, and found a bedside lamp by feel. She flicked it on.
Avery's bedroom was a little less monastic than the living room. There were cheap bookcases stuffed with paperbacks, and a laundry basket on the floor. A flat-screen TV sat on the floor by the bookcases, unplugged, which puzzled her until she realized Avery must have moved everything in here that he didn't want the puppies playing with.
Even as she turned around, the puppies had got hold of the bedspread and were pulling it off the bed, making tiny play growls as they wrestled with it.
"No, no, hush," she whispered, trying to separate them from it.
In the living room, she could hear Avery saying, "Yes, Mrs. Yee, of course I'll make sure there's no noise."
"Shhhhh!" she hissed, and tucked a puppy under each arm, like squirming footballs. Then she realized she had no idea where the other two were, and commenced a frantic search of the bedroom for the next few seconds that lasted until she discovered them inside the half-open closet.
The closet contained a few clothes, and some items on the shelf at the top, but it was mostly taken up with a pillow and blanket nest. Tufts of black wolf hair on the pillows made it clear this was most likely where Avery slept. Interesting, she thought. Were the pups allowed in here? They seemed to think so.
Just in case, she herded them out and managed to get everybody up on the bed. She was trying to keep them all contained and quiet, and attempting to rescue a sock they'd stolen from the laundry basket, when Avery came in.
"It was the noise, mostly," he said, sitting beside her on the edge of the bed. "Which I should've thought of. It must sound like a herd of rhinos to the downstairs neighbors. I don't think Mrs. Yee will turn me in to the landlord—I told her I was in an emergency pet-sitting situation for a friend who was in the hospital."
"Tonight's the last night anyway," she reminded him.
"I know."
He looked downcast again. She was scrambling around for something to say, when the puppies took advantage of her distraction to make a break for it. She managed to catch the small gray one, but the other three ended up on the floor, including the one with the sock. A wild chase around the bedroom ensued.
"No, damn it, this is what they were doing before," Avery moaned.
Between the two of them, they got all four puppies captured and back up on the bed, but it was very clear none of them were anywhere near sleeping.
"You know what?" Avery said. "Let's take them outside. They can't possibly run around enough to tire themselves out in here without waking up the whole building, but there's a little park nearby where they can run as much as they like. It's fenced. People take their dogs there and sometimes even let them off leash, though you're not supposed to."
"Is it safe at night?"
He smiled at her. "You'll be with a werewolf who is also an officer of the peace. You couldn't be safer."
She was still recovering from the stomach-fluttery impact of that smile when he got up and limped over to the closet. He froze briefly—realizing it was open, and had been open the whole time she was in here.
Doesn't want me seeing his nest, she thought. Doesn't like people seeing where he sleeps.
Avery reached onto the top shelf, took something down, and then pulled the closet door firmly shut. "Here, take this," he said, his voice a little brusque. He was flushed.
Nicole set the puppies on the floor and took "this", which turned out to be a leash. Avery wasn't meeting her eyes.
"It's normal, you know," she said. "Lots of shifters have a den."
"What?" He looked up at her from fiddling with the other thing, a slender blue collar.
"Your den," she said, tipping her head toward the closet. "A lot of us do that. My sister has a grove of indoor gum trees—eucalyptus trees, I mean, in pots."
Avery looked completely floored. For once, his guarded face was open. "That's ... something people do?"
"Something a lot of people do," she reassured him. "Especially shifters who are private and secretive animals, and werewolves are definitely that."
The smile he gave her this time—it sang. "Thank you," Avery said.
She wasn't sure what to say to that, but before she could decide, he reached behind his neck and fastened the collar loosely. Dog tags clinked as he tucked it under the collar of his turtleneck.
"Protective camouflage?" she guessed.
"Exactly. For when I have to shift in public. The number on the tags is actually my friend Jack's, just in case I get picked up by Animal Control and he has to come get me."
Nicole tried not to giggle. "Has that ever happened?"
"Once or t
wice. It's useful to have someone around to play 'owner'." He nodded to the leash in her hand.
"This is getting a bit kinky for a first date."
"Ha." Avery picked up two of the puppies.
"What's the name on your tags?" she asked, following him into the living room with the other two. "Same as your name? If I'm going to be your new owner, I should probably know that."
"No, I thought putting Avery on the tags would be stretching my luck a bit. It's Midnight."
"Midnight," she snickered. "That sounds like a horse."
"I made the mistake of letting Jack name me. I figured that since I'm 'his' dog, he ought to pick a name he can remember. It was the name of a dog he had when he was a kid, apparently."
"I stand corrected," Nicole said. "This is not just kinky for a first date, but I'm pretty sure we have barely begun to plumb the depths of kink in this situation."
Avery set down the puppies to put his coat on. They immediately raced off. He sighed.
"Could we put them in the carrier?" Nicole asked.
"No," Avery said a little too quickly. He amended: "The point is not to advertise to the whole building that I'm keeping animals up here. Think you can hide two of them under your jacket?"
"Er, I guess I can try."
After retrieving the puppies, Avery buttoned his coat—a black wool trench coat, which she couldn't help thinking was designed to conceal dark-colored wolf hair—and wrapped his arm around its squirming contents. With his other hand, he reached for his cane. "Shall we go?"
Chapter Seven
They made a truly bizarre procession down the stairs, especially since they were trying to be quiet. Nicole couldn't even look at Avery without both of them choking on giggles. Her entire jacket was squirming. Little puppy heads and tails and paws kept popping out and needing to be shoved back in. And it tickled. By the time they got to the ground floor, they were both convulsed with silent giggles.
"Park," Nicole gasped. "Quickly."
Avery led the way, making good time despite having to juggle the cane and his wriggling burden. Nicole followed close on his heels. There was nothing noticeably worrisome about the neighborhood at night. She supposed she'd soaked up the idea as a child that American cities were terribly dangerous, and despite having lived here for the better part of a decade, she'd never quite shaken a borderline-superstitious fear of being out at night.
You probably deal with more dangerous situations every day at your job.
"Avery," she said, stuffing a puppy back in. "You don't have collars for them, do you? What if we lose track of them?"
"We won't."
"How do you know that?" The chaos in the bedroom came to mind. She couldn't even keep all of them in sight in one room of a small apartment, let alone a park surrounded by roads.
"Trust me," Avery said. "I can. It's a werewolf thing."
The sidewalk became a bike path leading into the park. He'd said it was fenced, but the fencing appeared to be partial, mostly enclosing the playground area. In the darkness, the place was utterly deserted, lit only by a handful of lamp posts. This was seeming like a worse and worse idea.
"Avery, are you sure—"
"I'm sure. I come here at night sometimes by myself. It isn't dangerous, and if anyone comes around, I'll get rid of them for you."
She sat on a park bench and watched nervously as he stepped back into a patch of shadow and undid his coat. The puppies immediately attempted to make a break for it, but this time Avery gave them a little shake and growled softly at them. It wasn't a sound a human throat should have been able to make. And, to her astonishment, they obeyed, settling in at his feet while he stripped off his coat and sweater.
"Sorry about this," Avery said, not quite looking at her as he undid his pants. "Nudity is a necessary part of the operation."
"I don't mind," she said. "I can look away if you want me to."
He glanced up at her, his smile small and playful. "You don't have to."
The lighting was poor; he'd chosen his shadowed spot well. He was nothing but a study in light and shadow as he shed his clothing. All she caught were flashes, the reflection of light off pale skin. She did get a glimpse of the extensive scarring across his hip and leg—and then Avery the human was gone, melting into a lean black wolf with startling, pale eyes.
He trotted out of the shadows, jaws open in a canine smile. The blue of the collar brought out the blue in his eyes, which as far as she could tell in the poor light were the same color as his human eyes. Otherwise he was solid black except for a few faint hints of silver around his muzzle and underbelly.
"You're beautiful," she breathed, and meant it.
Avery brushed his furry head against her leg, and then turned to scent the air. The puppies inside her jacket went into a renewed fit of scrabbling. This time she let them go, setting them on the grass beside the bench.
She was expecting them to romp off in a rapture of exploration. But instead they joined the other two in a huddle at Avery's heels. He had his head up, ears pricked, face turned into the cool, damp night wind.
"Do you smell anything dangerous?" she asked. The puppies certainly looked afraid. All the confidence they'd displayed in the doctor's office was absent here. One of them, the small gray one, was whining softly.
Avery shook his shaggy wolf's head.
"It's the night, then," she guessed. "No ... it's being outside. They aren't used to being outside."
Avery nosed the pups gently. He took a few steps, and they scrambled along like a string of baby ducklings, trying to stay in physical contact with him.
Avery turned around to face them, and as Nicole watched in delight, he dipped his forequarters in the classic canine "Play with me!" pose. His shaggy brush of a tail wagged, and he tilted his head to the side and executed a slightly awkward hop, hampered by his stiff back leg.
The pups responded with tentative wagging. Gently he coaxed them out of their fear, leading them across the grass until they began to interact with their new, wild world, sniffing dead leaves on the lawn and standing up with their feet on the trunks of trees to look up into the branches.
Avery looked back at Nicole and gave a soft whuff. His tail wagged once. The invitation was clear.
"Okay, I'm coming too," she said, smiling. She gathered up his clothes and shoes, wrapping them in his coat, and with his cane dangling loosely from her hand, followed them deeper into the park.
By daylight it would be utterly prosaic: an expanse of lawn and a small playground, surrounded by scattered trees and a skirting of thick shrubbery around the edge. But the absence of people and the night's exotic black-and-silver palette lent a touch of magic. Nicole felt like a storybook character who'd found a hidden key to unlock the door to a secret world few people had ever seen.
She stayed on the bike path, while the wolves frolicked on the damp, leaf-strewn grass. After a time she noticed her shoes were getting wet, so she found a different bench, laid down Avery's coat to sit on, and waited in the stillness of the night. She was neither bored nor afraid, content to sit and soak in the peace of the park at night. The puppies had completely overcome their fear now; all five wolves vanished into the hedges, and she could only catch occasional glimpses, flashes of movement in pools of streetlight. At one point they discovered the playground equipment, and she watched, grinning, as the pups tried to clamber up the slide, and firmly resisted Avery's attempts to redirect them to the other side of it. In their wolf bodies they might not have been able to climb the steps anyway.
Avery had been right, after all. He was clearly having no trouble keeping them all with him.
She was tempted to shift and join them. The playground equipment looked like the sort of thing a koala might be able to climb on and hang from. But she resisted the urge. With his collar and unusual coloring, Avery did look like a big black dog. A koala, on the other hand, wasn't easy to mistake for anything but a koala. She was more useful playing responsible dog owner just in case anyone else s
howed up.
And people did wander through the park occasionally, even this late at night. A group of university-age kids came along, boys and girls laughing and shoving each other, obviously a little drunk. A homeless person arrived in their wake, pushing a shopping cart full of bottles and cans, stopping to look in all the rubbish containers for more. Another shuffled through a little later, hunched and weaving. Both of them were bundled so thoroughly she couldn't tell their age or sex.
But she truly wasn't afraid. Avery was right, there was nothing to fear here. The air smelled sharp and clean, nothing at all like city air, as if the world itself was wilder at night. Nicole tipped back her head and looked up at the sky—tinted orange from the city's glow, too cloudy for stars—and marveled at this night world she'd moved through all her life, but only just now discovered.
Avery appeared out of the shadows under the trees, herding the puppies in front of him. He moved with a fast, sideways-twisting gait, compensating for his stiff rear leg better as a wolf than he ever could as a man.
Nicole leaned forward, wanting to thank him for showing her the night. He shifted as he approached her and reached for his clothes as he said, low, "We have to leave now."
"What?" She was startled out of her peaceful state by his agitation. "Why? There were some teenagers here earlier—did they see you?"
"No, it's not them." He pulled up his pants, and as he turned away to zip up, she saw other scars on his back, different from the ones on his hip and leg. Nicole was a social worker; she knew what those little round scars meant. She'd already guessed that he'd been abused, but she still flinched from the evidence, enough that she barely heard what he said next: "We need to get back to the apartment. There's something in the park with us."