by L. E. Horn
The thought brought me up short. I want to turn into a monster? When did I decide I wanted this? Yet there was no denying what I felt. I wanted the change, was ready to embrace it. And as much as Dillon was the excuse, it didn’t fully explain the desire within me. At some point in the last few days, I had transitioned from a bite victim to a wulfleng.
Keen stared up at me with a curious expression, her tongue hanging from her mouth as she panted. She loved this bush plowing adventure. Trails are boring, Dad.
“Do you want a werewolf for a master?” I asked her. She pricked her ears and barked.
Okay, then. I started down the path again, feeling strangely determined. Yet no matter how hard I tried, the wulf either wouldn’t, or couldn’t, come. The forest sprang to vivid life, rippling with clarity and color that filled me with wonder. My fingers and toes changed, the tendons growing strong and claws appearing in place of fingernails. My gums bled as the teeth emerged. My brain absorbed scents and spat out surprisingly accurate answers—obviously, my human nose had registered these smells over the years, just not consciously or with this kind of power. It made me ponder a world—so alive for dogs and other animals—that humans ignored.
I could hear the panic of small fleeing creatures as I crashed through their home. Keen worked hard to stay ahead of me, her sleek body slipping through the bush while mine stumbled along after her. When I flagged, I used the images of Chloe, Dillon, and the abandoned puppy to sustain me.
But the wulf held back, denying me the power of a predator running on four paws with the body of an animal and the brain of a man. Frustrated, I stopped again, and Keen returned to me, panting as much as I was, and licked my hand. I raised it and examined the thickened pads beneath the strong fingers, and the wicked claws.
No wulf today, I thought with resignation. I sighed and turned around, limping on bleeding feet. When I next looked at my hands, they had reverted to human, and I folded them into fists.
I hadn’t been paying attention to where I ran, and Keen and I should have been lost. But my route appeared obvious with my new detailed vision, and I could smell where we’d been. Keen danced along beside me, a wide grin on her silly face. It seemed my furry friend enjoyed the wulf in me as much as I did.
We regained the trail and I collected my runners, but in a fit of pure stubbornness, I refused to put them on. Keen’s nose lifted just as the breeze carried a scent to me, and I inhaled deeply. I’d already experienced how strongly smell connected to memory, but it still surprised me when an image of Chris popped into my head. Keen took off—tail madly circling. I came around the bend to see the enforcer standing at the path’s entrance with his hands on his hips, naked.
“I was about to come find you.” He looked me up and down. “What the hell happened?”
I glanced at myself, at the torn and bleeding skin on my feet and arms, and the rips in my tee shirt and sweats. When I met his gaze but didn’t answer, he turned around and headed not to the barn, but to the house. My panting friend and I followed.
On the way, Chris gathered his clothes from the branches of what I guessed was a crab apple tree, judging by the shriveled remnants of last year’s bounty beneath my toes. He dressed as he moved, so fluidly that even stepping into his jeans was done with barely a hitch in his stride. I found the process so fascinating that I almost tripped over Keen when she danced at my feet.
When we entered the house, Josh took one look at me and made a wordless sound of horror. He ran down the steps and helped me into the kitchen.
“Strip,” ordered Chris. I hesitated but obeyed. He scrutinized my wounds with an expert eye and on occasion, a finger, before frowning at me.
“Shower. Now.” He wrapped a hand around my arm, spun me, and guided me toward the bathroom. We paused at the linen closet, where he pulled out a robe. “Scrub those cuts out as well as you can,” he said, pushing me through the door.
When I emerged sometime later, I had recovered some semblance of normality. Chris sat at the table while Josh put the finishing touches on a breakfast fit for a king. As I eased myself onto a seat, my stomach growled loud enough for mere humans to hear. Chris laughed and Josh shook his head, piling my plate with eggs and bacon.
I shoveled a respectful helping of both into my mouth.
“So,” Chris said. “How far did you get?”
I swallowed, almost choking on my half-chewed mouthful. I knew he wasn’t referring to distance. “Not far enough.” The words slipped from me before I even thought about what I was saying, and his eyebrows climbed.
“Tell me.”
“My fingers and toes. My teeth. Eyes, I think—my vision changed, things were more detailed, the colors different. Smell and hearing were enhanced. That’s it.”
Chris snorted. “You’re still two weeks from the full moon. That’s goddamned amazing. What did you use for motivation?”
I hesitated. The first answers seemed obvious. “Peter. Chloe. Dillon. I can’t help them the way I am now.” Chris waited for more. “Can’t explain the other. The wulf wants out, I want it out. I thought if I kept pushing myself, it would come.”
He took a mouthful of his breakfast as though people tried to push for a wulf transformation every morning. When he raised his eyes to mine, however, I saw concern in them.
“Be careful what you wish for,” he said. “You aren’t ready for the full wulf. I do, however, admire your dedication to the cause.”
I can do it. The surge of defiance caught me off guard. It must have showed in my eyes, for his widened slightly. My respect for the enforcer made me push it back down—if I wanted to get through this, I needed to pay attention. So I nodded and shoveled in another load. I became aware of Josh, standing very still as he listened to us before he turned to fill a bowl with hot water and grabbed towels from a drawer. He approached me—disapproval and worry radiating from him in waves.
“You’ll get there soon enough,” he groused as he kneeled by my feet. I twisted sideways to accommodate him, holding my precious plate of breakfast. He washed the cuts, working with incredible gentleness. They had stopped bleeding, but Josh made a soft sound when he raised one foot to look at the hamburger beneath. He plucked a crushed crab apple from between my toes.
“They’ll need soaking,” he said through gritted teeth. He stood and disappeared down the hall, in pursuit, I suspected, of a container big enough for my size elevens.
I paused in my shoveling. “Is he okay?”
One corner of Chris’s mouth curved up in a smile. “Some people fall on swords. And some patch them up. Sometimes he tires of doing the patching.”
Thinking of the network of scars across Chris’s body, I figured Josh had likely done more than his fair share. Josh returned, wielding a plastic tub that fit my feet with room to spare. I plopped them in, and he poured the hot water over them, followed by a generous dollop of antiseptic from an oversized bottle. Refilling the smaller bowl with fresh water, he thumped it onto the table near the food, and placed the bottle beside it.
“When you’re finished eating, Chris can clean those cuts. I have a rose bush that needs pruning.” He stalked down the hall and disappeared outside. A second later he returned to dig out gardening gloves and his pruners from a cupboard. Then he left again, slamming the door with vigor.
I looked at Chris. His gaze remained fastened on the door until he sensed my stare. The small frown he wore cleared as he grinned at me. “Don’t let him get to you. He worries, and I suppose if the situation were reversed, I would too. I wouldn’t want to be married to me, either.”
“You guys are married?”
“Mated in the wulfan world, married in the human. Not everyone knows, because prejudices exist among the wulfan, just as they do with humans. His parents don’t approve.” He shrugged and reached for the pancakes.
I almost asked what he’d left behind in Texas, but I was too damned hungry to talk. I swallowed as I handed him the syrup and slipped Keen a hunk of bacon. We all chewed in a
curious harmony, at peace with each other and a situation that should have terrified me. I wondered at it. My time as a vet had been fulfilling but now, I realized I’d been running on autopilot. My difficult past had been buffered by my present relative and reassuring uniformity. I’d believed control over my daily existence would lead to the balance I craved.
Since Dillon bit me, everything had been tossed in the air. Yet I was aware of excitement kindling within, almost a sensation of rebirth—as though for the first time, I raised my head to look around. And recognized that I hadn’t dealt with my past, or even left it behind, I’d just got more efficient at hiding it.
To find my wulf, I had to tear the memories free from behind the walls and embrace them.
The concept daunted me, but something within rose to the challenge. I sensed the jigsaw pieces of my life coming together when they should have been ripping apart.
I glanced across to Chris, who raised an eyebrow at me. “Next time you want to try to kill yourself, take me with you, eh?”
My face split into a grin. “Eh? You sure you weren’t born Canadian?”
He snorted, and the final piece clicked into place. Chris and I were the same on some fundamental level. It had nothing to do with the usual things that pulled humans together.
It had everything to do with the wulf.
11
That night, the fever burned so hot I thought I’d leave scorch marks on the sheets. By morning, it had subsided, but it left me feeling wrung out. Chris arrived and forced two bottles of water on me.
“I have news from Texas,” he said as I guzzled.
I choked on the water and coughed. “What did you find out?”
His expression revealed his reluctance, as though he’d debated telling me. “I had a friend, a fellow enforcer, sniff around. First up, Dillon was a hair’s breadth from being bull’s-eyed when he and Chloe took off.”
I cracked the seal on the second bottle, listening. This revelation didn’t surprise me.
“There was an incident at a bar. A guy asked Chloe to dance. Two days later, he turned up dead in a river, with his throat torn out.”
The bottle was elevated in my hand, while my mouth opened and closed. “Oookay,” I said. “They couldn’t pin it on Dillon?”
“What human rips out someone’s throat? It looked like an animal attack. The enforcers suspected, but the body had been in the water too long for them to pick up a scent.”
“This was how long after Dillon was bitten?” I took a long gulp.
“Five weeks. After his first full moon. But there are also questions as to how Dillon ended up infected.”
“He was bitten. By Chloe’s brother, Tate, I think it was.” I stared hard at Chris.
“Tate swears he didn’t bite Dillon, and his brother Will backs him up.” Chris leaned against the wall.
“But—how did Dillon get infected?”
The enforcer’s mouth twitched. “When my friend put pressure on Tate, he admitted that Chloe and Dillon were . . . indisposed when the brothers found them in the park.”
“They were screwing around? But she hadn’t seen Dillon in years.”
“Dillon had been in the city for at least a month by that point. One of Chloe’s university friends reported Chloe had, quote unquote, ‘this dreamy big guy for a boyfriend. Kinda intense.’”
My mind raced. So much for just being friends. “So Chloe . . .?”
The dark eyes rolled. “It isn’t hard to infect someone if it’s a full moon and you’re having sex. Even saliva can spread the infection.”
Right. “But Chloe would know.”
Chris stared at me.
“My God. You think she did it deliberately. To turn Dillon into a wulfleng.”
“I suspect so, yeah.” He sighed. “Peter won’t believe me, though. He says she’d never do that and would never lie to him.”
My heart constricted. It explained the guilt, all right. Had she talked Dillon into it, or had he gone in blind? “She’s Peter’s family, so he has to side with her. But it explains her guilt. If Dillon steps over the line, though, will she let him go?”
“That,” he said, his lips tightening, “is the million-dollar question. At least now we know. And Peter may not have wanted to hear it, but he knows I have no reason to lie.”
“Yeah.” But the entire scenario painted a dark picture of Chloe. Where did it leave Peter?
Chris made me finish my water and we got to work. We were halfway through our meditation session before I remembered to ask about the problem in Brandon. Chris tried to keep me on target, but when it became obvious that particular ship had sailed, he relented.
“We think there’s an uprising in the works. The head enforcer for the region, Matt, is still gathering intel, but it has him worried.” Chris shook his head, frowning.
“Is he sure it’s an uprising?”
“Matt’s team put down two wulfleng in the last week. It could be an epidemic, but he said it doesn’t feel that way. He came from Texas too. He knows the pattern.” Chris scrubbed a hand through his shaggy hair.
“Brandon has a team of enforcers?”
“Matt; his daughter, Sam; and an enforcer named Garrett. We’re spread thin across the prairies, but we have each other’s backs.
“Matt’s daughter? Women are enforcers too?”
Chris grinned, showing pearly white teeth, and I was certain the expression linked to his opinion of this Sam person. “Not often. Female wulfan are generally better trackers than the males and we have a few we call on when needed. The smaller size of she-wulfan can be a detriment when fighting a crazed wulfleng, although in my experience, females are fierce fighters. Truth be told, the enforcer world is still an old boy’s network, so we had to convince the board to let Sam step into those shoes. But she makes up for lack of size with—shall we say—technique. I’ve known her from a youngling; you don’t want to mess with her when she’s mad. She’s a chip off the old block.” Chris slapped his hands together. “Okay, if you refuse to meditate, get on the ground and give me a hundred.”
So, he wasn’t going to go easy on me because I was stupid enough to run barefoot through the woods. Half an hour later, I was doing one-armed pull-ups like I’d been doing them all my life. I finished my set and dropped to the floor, panting.
“Is it normal to be gaining strength this fast?” I asked Chris, who exhibited an impressive array of rippling muscle as he dangled from the ceiling.
“Nope,” he replied on the heels of a grunt. “You’re resetting the bar, kid.”
I peered at him, wondering if he was yanking my chain, but he seemed serious. Resetting the bar. Not unsettling in the least.
“Why am I different?”
Chris released the bar and reached for a towel to wipe the sweat off his face. Smug as I was about my increased strength, I couldn’t keep up with him if I tried. “I’ve no idea. I’ve sent a message to my old mentor in Texas but haven’t heard back yet.” He looked at me and spotted something in my expression. “It’s a curiosity, but that’s all. No worries. You’re doing great.”
Somewhat reassured, I toweled off. “I have two weeks to go,” I reminded him.
“Thirteen days. You’ll be fine; I feel it in my bones. I’ve never been so sure of a transformation. By the time the full moon arrives, you’ll be ready.”
“Maybe this is as far as I’ll ever get.” It surprised me to realize I feared that more than the actual transforming.
Chris snorted like a horse. “Yeah, right. Trust me, you will make a fine wulf.” He slapped me on the back, making me wince as he caught a scratch left by a sharp branch.
“Of course, you’ll be a bit of a wuss,” he grinned, rubbing the cut harder. I pulled away, laughing.
* * *
The days blurred together. I became frustrated that I wasn’t progressing fast enough, but Chris kept reminding me I was running ahead of the curve. I’d only been there a week, and my upper body rippled with so much new muscle, I
had to borrow some of his tee shirts. They hung on me, but it was progress, of a sort.
Although my physical changes seemed too slow, my senses were on fire. Scent, sight, hearing, taste—all flared and subsided so erratically it made me dizzy and speared metaphorical knives into my brain. Josh gave me scalp and neck massages in the evenings, to set me up for the night.
Chris, sitting next to my cage, watched me moan when nimble fingers dug in. “Good thing I’m not the jealous type,” he said.
“Too bad he’s already married.” I let my jaw drop as the magic thumbs worked their way into my shoulders. “Or I’d snap him up in a second.”
“Wrong sex,” Chris pointed out.
“I’m reconsidering,” I retorted.
We laughed, and Josh shook his head.
Ten days before the full moon, Chris and I were in the barn, working on guided visualizations when Josh appeared at the doorway, waving Chris’s phone. “Matt needs you,” he said.
Chris’s expression went grim, and he grabbed the device from Josh’s hand before leaving.
“Brandon?” I asked.
Josh nodded. “It isn’t looking good.”
“Do you ever go with him?”
A strange look flooded his face, a mixture of shame and disgust. “I tried. For a while. After we met.” He shook his head, and his jaw tightened. “But it just isn’t me. And when I realized Chris would get himself killed trying to protect me, I knew I couldn’t go.” His pale gaze scanned me before he continued. “Enforcers aren’t made—they’re born. Chris stepped onto the earth that way. He’s always given his all to protect those around him. It’s in his blood.” He paused, and for an instant, the wulf shone through in his eyes. “Just like it’s in yours.”
I stared at him in shock. “Christ, Josh, I’m not an enforcer. I’m not even wulfan. At this point, I’ll be lucky to make it to wulfleng status.”
