Secret Worlds (137 page)

But then Dale surprised me with my own name. “I can’t believe it! Terra?” he asked … then pulled me into a bear hug.

I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been hugged, and my body stiffened in response, then slowly relaxed as Dale’s brotherly affection washed over me. What kind of man would recognize on sight the sister-in-law he’d never met? Would catch her snooping, but assume her intentions were pure? My sister had clearly found a winner—too bad I was here to turn this kind-hearted man’s son into a psychopath.

“And you’re Dale,” I responded once he released me from the hug. I could just make out the hint of a tear welling up in one of my brother-in-law’s eyes, probably because my sister and I had a strong family resemblance. Just thinking about Brooke made my own eyes tear up, so I swiped at them as I turned a more honest smile on Dale. “I only just heard about Brooke,” I continued, “and I couldn’t stop myself from coming right away to meet you and Keith.”

Clearly I’d said the wrong thing. For the first time, Dale’s face became shadowed, and he paused for a minute before giving me the brushoff I’d been expecting, but for a different reason. “I’m not sure now’s a good time,” Dale said, and I realized the unhappiness on my brother-in-law’s face was for his son, not for the wife he’d lost a decade ago. Unlike me, Dale would have had plenty of time to put Brooke’s death behind him, but the inevitable changes in Keith as he approached his first shift would be worrisome to a human father. Unfortunately, those changes were only going to get worse.

“You’re worried about Keith,” I said, hoping to get Dale talking while I figured out how to approach the issue. Since my brother-in-law was a medical doctor, I’d be hard-pressed to pretend Keith had any kind of physical disease, but what about a hereditary mental illness? Something very vague and rare … and easily overcome with the proper therapy.

As I worked through the intricacies of a lie about my private therapy practice, Dale was spilling his worries that his son had fallen into a bad crowd in school, had started experimenting with drugs. “There’s a major problem in our area with young people abusing prescription drugs,” my brother-in-law told me earnestly, and I almost rolled my eyes at him. I had a feeling Keith was as straight as an arrow just like his father, and I was 99% sure any behavioral changes Dale noticed were due to his son’s approaching change. “I don’t want my son to make a bad first impression on his only aunt,” Dale finished. “Maybe you could come back in a few weeks?”

“Actually, I’m really glad I came when I did,” I told my brother-in-law, putting on my best pseudo-professional manner. “Did Brooke ever tell you about the … um … mental instability in our family?” Dale paled a bit, and I spun my tale as best I could. Good thing my brother-in-law was an easy mark since my abilities as a con artist left something to be desired. Between Dale’s gullibility, though, and facts pulled from his dossier, I was soon being shown through the house and into Keith’s bedroom. Where it became obvious from scent alone that the boy had already reached the bone-melting phase of a shift.

“Could you leave us alone for a moment?” I asked Dale calmly, then I quickly shut and locked the door behind him.

***

“Who are you?” the kid grunted from the bed. The curtains were drawn and the lights were off, so the room was dim, but I could feel the imminent shift pushing into my bones. Keith’s pheromones were drawing out my own wolf, but I had a plan to use that effect to my advantage. My nephew would have to help me, though, and there was no time to explain what we were doing. I needed to get him to shift back to human, and fast. Now was neither the time nor the place for his first change.

“I’m your aunt Terra,” I told Keith soothingly, coming to sit on the edge of the bed. “Brooke was my sister.”

“I heard you telling Dad you’re a shrink,” Brooke’s son said, turning to face me with piercing brown eyes just like my own. “He thinks I’m on drugs, but I swear I just tried pot that one time … .” He stopped speaking abruptly, twitching involuntarily as the pain hit, and I reached down to take his hand.

“I believe you, Keith, but I need you to trust me for a minute,” I said gently. “Can you match your breathing to mine? And keep looking into my eyes.” Keith’s attention had turned inward when the ache hit, but he clearly had some of his grandfather’s iron will because the boy was able to obey my request. I slowed my own breathing to lead Keith into a calmer place, then reached for my wolf brain.

What I was planning to do would be tricky, partly because I had such iron control over my wolf nowadays that I couldn’t seem to let her out when I wanted to. But also because I needed to be able to pull my wolf brain out far enough to yank Keith back to full humanity when I stopped my own shift … without letting my wolf escape all the way. Since a younger werewolf like my nephew would mirror any shift of an adult in close physical proximity, I figured my wolf and I could easily shut his wolf down, but only if my own darker half cooperated. It had been so long since I’d let her out that I was afraid my wolf wouldn’t go back to sleep willingly.

It was worth the risk, though, because it looked like Keith was going to change all the way if he didn’t get a little help. I couldn’t imagine how terrifying it would be to perform your first shift without understanding what you were, and the kid’s father might get torn apart in the process. I wasn’t sure if I owed Brooke anything after the way she had abandoned me to our father’s tender mercies, but Dale and Keith didn’t deserve to pay for her desertion.

My nephew’s breathing had slowed, but I could feel his wolf just out of sight, waiting to return to the surface. Meanwhile, I calmed my own mind enough to let my wolf up out of her cell, and she rose gently, not in the snarling rush I’d expected. I felt the tickling of hairs pushing out of my body, but there was little pain as my senses became more acute. I could smell Dale in the kitchen, pouring a cup of afternoon coffee, could almost catch a confusing hint of wolf scent outside the house. But I’d have to think about that later. Right now, I needed to turn off this shift.

Down!
I ordered my wolf, and as I’d expected, she growled at me, pain running up my arms as my fingers curled into claws. But, surprisingly, my wolf didn’t put up a fight. Instead, in rare human words, my wolf gave me an ultimatum—
I’ll go to sleep now, but in five minutes, we’re all wolf
.

Shit. This wasn’t good at all, but I had no choice except to agree. I could feel my wolf and Keith’s both descending deep into our subconscious, and my nephew looked up at me with suddenly clear eyes. “Wow, I feel a lot better!” he exclaimed. “That really helped. Thanks, Aunt Terra!”

I didn’t have time to answer, though. My wolf was inching her way back up that dark staircase in my mind, and I needed to be far away from father and son’s sight before my change hit. I tore through the living room and kitchen like my pants were on fire, and was out the door before Dale could even ask what was wrong. I was shifting by the time I hit the tree line, my clothes ripping off my back as my wolf form howled in triumph. Then she ran.

It had been so long since I’d turned wolf that I’d forgotten how it felt to subsume myself into her moods and desires. The wolf was still me, but the animal side of our nature was in charge of our actions, and everything we saw was filtered through her world view. Both of us were exuberant at the chance to run through the woods—it felt like taking off my bra at the end of a long work day, like reaching the high point of a perfect novel.
Unchained hunt
, my wolf added. No matter how we parsed the feelings, they were relief and excitement rolled into one.

My wolf was more restrained than I remembered, though. She still took in every squirrel and bird moving through the forest, but age allowed her to choose whether to give chase. We stalked a rabbit for half an hour, then let it go at the last minute.
Cheeseburger
, she told me, and I was almost sure the wolf was bartering with our human side. She seemed to recognize that spilling blood during her first run in six years would make another shift highly unlikely in the near future, but the wolf wanted to make it plain that she craved red meat. It felt strange to be making a deal with my animal side since I was used to her just taking what she wanted, but maybe the last decade had matured us both to the point where we could act as a team again.

We paused beside a small stream to lap up the cool water, but stopped when our nose picked up the scent of another wolf where one didn’t belong. Keith had never shifted all the way, so we shouldn’t be smelling my nephew’s wolf, but this was obviously a werewolf, and a male.
Alpha male
, my wolf corrected. We snarled in unison, our mothering instincts aroused by an unrelated male werewolf near Keith during his first shift.

The trouble was that alpha male werewolves had a nearly insurmountable urge to kill unrelated males as the youngsters reached the age of their first change. The behavior was a relic of our more primal days, when a young male in an alpha’s territory might be angling for his position, spurring the pack leader to squelch the challenge before it could be issued. The problem didn’t often come up, though, because everyone was related either by blood or by marriage in most packs, and some modern males had also learned to ignore the urge even around strangers. But not everyone could overpower his wolf … or wanted to. Keith wouldn’t be safe with an unknown alpha male lurking around.

The wolf and I turned to follow the male’s scent, and I wasn’t sure which of us was in charge as we put our nose to the ground and traced his path upstream through the trees. It smelled like the alpha had been there only hours previously, and the sinuous path suggested he’d lollygagged about, wandering through the woods as if they were his own. Another rumble came deep in our throats as we smelled where the male had marked his territory on the side of a lightning-scarred oak tree at the crest of the ridge.

Another few feet, and the wolf himself came into view. He was lounging on the leaf litter, where a gap in the canopy caused a ray of sun to warm his hide. The huge wolf was clearly well aware of our approach, but he simply yawned and laid his chin back down on his paws as we came closer, closing his eyes as if he was planning on finishing out his nap. And I wasn’t surprised by his behavior, either, because I recognized the canine’s coloration. The alpha male was Wolfie.

***

My wolf urged us forward to sniff under the alpha’s tail, but I pushed her down and fought to initiate the shift back into human form. As a canine, Wolfie was nearly double my size, and I suspected his human form was equally imposing, but I trusted my tongue more than I did my feet to get me out of this mess. I’d simply explain to the mutt that he was trespassing on private property, would threaten him with a restraining order if necessary, and would then head back down the hill to check on Keith. I had no idea why Wolfie was nosing around my nephew, but I wouldn’t feel safe until the kid was once again under my watchful eye.

Unfortunately, my wolf didn’t want to be locked away. It wasn’t just the lost joy of the hunt that made her irritable, it was Wolfie’s presence—my annoying wolf wanted to protect me. She also wanted to play with the alpha male for some crazy reason. Bending her forelegs down onto the ground, she lowered her head, raised her tail, and yipped.

Wolfie opened his eyes and tilted his head at us quizzically, then rose to his feet. He didn’t seem to know what to make of my wolf any more than I did, but I couldn’t spend much time paying attention to the alpha. I was focusing all of my energy on trying to still my human mind enough to initiate the shift back to two feet.

My reverse shifts always felt entirely different than the change from human to wolf. Instead of pain, as fur melted away and paws became hands, I usually experienced supreme relief, a bit like stepping into a warm shower after a long day on the trail. Today, though, I didn’t feel any relief … because there was no shift. My wolf was thoroughly in charge. In fact, I could feel her gently guiding my human brain down toward that cage I’d built deep in the dark recesses of our mind to house her. Seeing the trap closing around me, wolf-like, I clawed to escape.

Despite our internal battle, our external form was still dancing around Wolfie, and it soon became clear that the larger wolf was less than pleased by our presence. He turned as if to go, then sighed and walked back toward us. Gently but firmly, the male wolf took our nose in his jaws, just like my father had done years ago, but without the part where his teeth pierced my skin. Even though the younger alpha was gentle, his act of dominance chastened my wolf long enough for me to escape her clutches, and at the same instant when my human brain became dominant, Wolfie shifted, pulling me with him back into human form.

The relief of the change elicited a breathless gasp from me, more euphoric than usual because I’d thought my wolf had won our battle and terror had begun to kick in. My legs were wobbly from the shift and I would have fallen to the ground in surprise if Wolfie’s huge arms weren’t wrapped around me, his mouth still on top of my nose. “Whoa,” he breathed as he steadied me, and I became aware of the fact that we were both naked, the alpha’s bare skin pressing against my own.

Kiss him
, demanded my wolf just as I clanged the iron-barred doors behind her and locked the canine away in her prison. Ignoring the unsolicited advice, I took a step back and struggled to pull my eyes away from Wolfie’s very masculine form.

***

“It seemed like you were having a little trouble with your wolf,” the man said gruffly, as if prepared for me to lash out at him for his act of dominance. It took me a minute to focus on his words, though, because my brain was still processing the scenery.

It shouldn’t have bothered me that the man in front of me was naked since frequent shifts made werewolf packs a bit of a clothing-optional society. But it had been years since I’d spent much time around werewolves, and the human mores around me had sunken in. I averted my gaze in embarrassment, only afterwards realizing that my body language would be read by a werewolf as a display of submission. That thought prompted me to ignore his conversation starter and to go off on a tangent of my own. I turned flashing eyes back onto Wolfie and verbally ripped into him.