“I’m a shifter,” Nathan said. “I was never happy living back in Chicago. I prefer to make friends out here.”
“We haven’t made too many friends out here yet,” Morgan reminded him. “I guess we’ve both been too busy with our work.”
“I’m a shifter, Morgan,” he repeated to her. “Would you like me to share you with another man?”
This had come out of left field. Morgan was left without any answer to give. They had never discussed this before. She knew shifter men liked to share their women. But she just figured that what she and Nathan had was special. They didn’t need anything more in their relationship except for each other.
Morgan climbed off his lap and turned her back on him to look out the window at the mountains and what remained of the winter snow.
“I don’t want another man,” she said quietly under her breath and didn’t even know why she had to answer to an idea that, in her mind, was nothing but foolish. “I want you to be the happy, carefree young executive I met in grad school three years ago.”
Nathan got up from his desk and stood behind her. He wrapped his arms around her waist and held her back against his hard body. “I don’t want you to ever be alone,” he told her and moved her hair out of the way to kiss down the back of her neck.
His kisses felt wonderful. But his words scared the hell out of her.
“If ever I’m not here, I want you to take other men—other shifter men like me,” he whispered into her ear. “They’ll love you and take care of you. You are so wonderful, Morgan. You have so much to give. You deserve the best from life and from your lovers.”
Morgan closed her eyes. She wanted to tell him that he was the best because that was how she really felt deep down, except that now, with him acting like a stranger, she wasn’t sure what the right thing to say to him was.
She was confused. Why did he think she would be alone and looking for other lovers when she had him and he was all she wanted?
Three weeks later, the first day of spring arrived. The weather in the mountains slowly began to turn nicer and warmer. However, the sickness inside Nathan grew worse.
Nathan shifted every night now, but he also shifted in the day. He spent hours away from Morgan and his house. It had gotten so he was a wolf more than he was a man. Though he missed Morgan because he loved her, she was the only part he missed of himself as a man.
Nathan needed to be the wolf now and found it painful to be a man. He knew he was getting worse. His sickness was of his body, and because he knew he might lose Morgan, it was of his soul, also.
He could barely stand to see or talk with Morgan because he knew he had failed her. He was ashamed of himself and his own miserable weakness. Fight it as he might, he was not strong enough to overcome his desire to be the wolf, and the sickness inside his body.
Nathan had talked with a doctor in Wolf Creek and then with his parents, who lived on a farm thirty miles away. He now knew the details of what was wrong with him, but he could not tell Morgan. His desire to protect her and see her safe had never been stronger. If he told her the worst, it would only cause her more pain, and there was nothing she could do to help his physical condition.
If he got better, the world he had known as a man would wait for him. The only problem was Morgan might not.
He met her as he was walking along a mountain trail that morning. He had not spoken with her in over two days. He knew she would be pissed with him and have every right to be so. To speak with her now was hard. He just couldn’t let her inside, and she had no idea what was happening to him or the direction his life, and therefore her own, was about to take.
“Nathan!” Morgan came running down the trail when she spotted him. “I’ve been looking for you all night. Oh my God. Where have you been, baby?”
Nathan stopped and waited for her to catch up to him. He stiffened when she threw her arms around his shoulders and hugged him.
“I’m so sorry, Morgan,” he told her. He hated himself because he thought he sounded weak. He was certainly not articulate enough to explain his situation to her.
“This has to stop,” she said, although he was relieved to see she wasn’t angry. But the fear behind her words hurt him even worse than her anger, because he knew he had been the one to cause it. “You have to tell me what’s wrong and let me help you. Please, Nathan. I love you. Let me help you.”
“I’m going away,” Nathan said. It took all his courage to finally make this announcement. Things had been so good between them until this damn sickness had taken over and ruined things. He cursed himself for not being a stronger man, for not being stronger for Morgan and capable of licking this thing on his own without help from his wolf.
“I don’t understand. Where are you going?”
“I can’t be a man anymore. I’m going to be the wolf.”
Morgan shook her head. “But you’ve always shifted. What’s different about this time?” she said. She didn’t seem to understand.
“This won’t just be a shift,” he explained. “When I change this time, I won’t be a man again.”
Morgan released him and took a step away. He watched tears well in her eyes. “Not ever?” Her voice choked on the question.
“I’ll be back.” He tried to sound more confident than he really felt because he knew he might not ever be back. He reached out for her and took her back in his arms. She tried to struggle away, but he wouldn’t let her go. “I love you, Morgan. And I’ll always be right here in this forest.”
“You’ll be a wolf out here?” she asked him. “But you won’t be a man anymore?”
Nathan took her under an arm and led her down the trail at his side. He thought one last walk together would do them both a lot of good. There was a lot to say. Some things he would probably never find a way to give voice to. But this would be his last chance to try for a while, perhaps his last chance to ever try with her again.
“Baby, I’m thirty years old,” he started. “Everything came too fast in life for me, college in Chicago and my career with the software company. Then meeting you…”
“Are you sorry you met me, Nathan?”
“Meeting you was the best thing that ever happened to me.”
“Then why are you doing this? Why are you leaving me?”
He sighed and continued to lead them forward along the trail. He just couldn’t tell her everything. He didn’t want her to know the full truth. “I talked with Doctor Hughes in Wolf Creek last week. Then I drove out to the farm to see Mom and Dad.”
He felt her tense under his arm. She had never gotten along well with his parents. “Couldn’t they help you?” she asked.
“They put things in perspective for me.” A cold breeze blew against them, and he hugged her to keep her warm. “Sometimes male shifters experience a need to let their wolf free. Not everyone goes through this, but some of us do. When it happens, it’s as if the wolf controls us for a while. This is what’s happening to me now. But I’ll be okay. I’ll be back someday.”
“I don’t understand.” She sounded so disappointed with him.
“I’m going to shift later today or maybe tonight after I’ve had a chance to spend time with you as a man. After I shift, I won’t be a man again for a long time.”
“And your mother and father and the doctor in Wolf Creek think this is normal.” Now there was disbelief laced with disgust in her voice. But it was better that she felt this way. It was better, even if she ended up hating him, than if she knew the real truth of what the doctor in Wolf Creek had told him.
“It’s not normal, but it does happen.” He was telling her a white lie. He reached to her face and wiped a tear away. “I’m so sorry, Morgan. Now that it’s happened to me, I hate myself. I’ve let you down big time. I’m a lousy boyfriend.”
“Well, isn’t there anything you can do?”
He shook his head, feeling helpless and disgusted with himself. “Just give in to the wolf. Let it pass. In time it will be over, and I’ll be back…” This was another lie. He didn’t know if he ever would be back as a man again.
“How long?”
Nathan paused. He couldn’t answer her or, more accurately, did not want to answer her. “I don’t know.”
“A week? A month?” she probed him.
“No.” He let go of her and walked ahead on the path. There was snow under his boots, and it crunched loudly and broke the eerie silence between them. “It could be years…”
He turned to watch her throw her hands in the air. “Oh God, Nathan!” she cried. “So this is it? You and me are finished?”
“No, we’re not!” He was at her side in a second and had her back in his arms. She struggled to get free, but again his strength won out, and he held her to him until she calmed down. “I don’t want to lose you, Morgan. And I am terrified that I will.”
“I don’t think I can wait for you for years, Nathan. I’m only twenty-four years old. I want to have a normal life like everyone else.”
He gripped her by the arms and forced her to look up into his eyes, holding her so tight he was afraid he hurt her. “My friends back in Chicago, my family, the folks I know in Wolf Creek—fuck them! Fuck them all! You’re all I have in this world, Morgan. You are my only link to humanity. If I lose you, I don’t think I’ll ever be back. I won’t have any reason to come back.”
“Then don’t leave me!” she shouted and clutched onto him and pulled him down to her with all her might. “Stay with me and let me get you some help for whatever it is that is wrong with you. All I want to do is help you.”
“And I’m asking for your help.” Nathan refused to plead with her. But he loved her, and the plea in his voice came through loud and clear anyway. “I’m asking you to stick by me during this time. When I come back to you, I promise to never leave you again. At that time, this will all be behind us, and we can have the kind of life we always talked about. The kind of life we had started to build out here together. The two of us get each other. I couldn’t ask this of anyone else but you.”
He saw confusion cloud her eyes. There was a lot of pain inside her, and he hated himself because he was the one to bring it to her. Would it have been better for her if she had never met him? But it was too late for these doubts now.
“Where will you be?” she asked him.
“Right here in this forest as a wolf.”
“Where will I go?”
“You’ll stay here in our home.”
“I don’t think I can do that for you, Nathan.” More tears were falling down her cheeks.
“Do you still love me?”
“How can you even ask me that now?” she shouted at him. “You know I’ve always loved you. You’ve been my one weakness.” She tried to push away from him again, but he held her tight and refused to let her go.
“I want you to stay here and live in our house. Everything I’ve got is yours while I’m gone.”
She shook her head, not wanting to hear any of it. “I can’t just stay out here by myself for years and wait for you. I’m not that strong. I’ll be dead or a lunatic by the time you come back.”
“I don’t want you to be alone. I want you to take other mates. There are a lot of shifter males in Wolf Creek, Morgan. Do it for yourself, and do it for me. I’d like to see another man make you happy when I cannot. That would give me satisfaction also.”
Now she did push out of his grip and get away from him and run down the trail as he followed her. “I’m not going to do that! I’m not going to become a whore with other men just so you can stay as an animal and watch while they fuck me. If you really think that, then you must think very little of me.”
“You have my permission to do whatever you need to do to survive until I come back for you. If you want to stay alone without companionship, then stay alone. I’ll always be nearby as the wolf.”
He caught up with her and pulled her back against his body. His lips found hers for a brutal kiss of desire. Her mouth opened to him, and their tongues warred between their mouths.
He tasted the salt of her tears as they fell down her cheeks, and he kissed them away for her. He realized this glorious woman loved him, and she would be his reason to come back as a man one day, stronger than ever. She would be his reason to fight the disease and live.
“I love you,” he whispered as their kiss broke.
“But not enough to stay with me,” she challenged him.
“If I could rip my heart out and stop the change inside my body, I’d do it for you.” He shook her in his arms and pulled her hair back, forcing her to look at him. “Goddamn it, Morgan, I need you to understand me now. I need that more than I’ve ever needed anything from you.”
When he raised his voice, he saw a hint of what might have been recognition pass through her. Her stance softened against him.
“Will you be a year?”
He shook his head. “It may be longer than that.”
“It damn well better not be.” Now her voice was forceful. “I’m giving you a year. You had better be back to me as a man one year from today.”
Nathan brought up his courage. He would not lie to this woman who he loved so much. “All right. For you, I’ll make it happen.”
They kissed again long and hard.
“In the meantime I want you to make it by without me in the best way you can,” he told her. “Do anything you have to, and know that I love you. Be strong, Morgan. Be strong for us.”