by Rhys Ford
Maybe his aunt was right. Maybe Zach needed to shake himself out of the box he’d been living in and take a chance on something—or someone—unexpected. He’d recovered from a car crash everyone said should have killed him, and although it took him a while to get back on his feet, he’d fought hard to do so. Living in San Francisco, working in a corner office of his family’s business, and drifting in and out of unsatisfying relationships was all he had to look forward to if he didn’t make some kind of change. Purchasing the bed-and-breakfast was an out-of-the-blue decision no one in his family agreed with, but for Zach, it seemed like a step in the right direction—actually, any step was better than going backward.
“Cider sounds really good,” Zach finally said, shoving his hands into his jeans pockets. “And maybe we can get around talking about belly rubs. Right after I put my shoes in the closet.”
IT WAS normal.
And that made it very weird.
Gibson had never done normal. He couldn’t imagine what it was like to sit down with another man over a pair of hard ciders and simply talk about life—including how being a shifter affected how he lived. The few people he had shared with in the past distanced themselves a bit, a slight gritty uneasiness forming between them, and they rarely spoke of what he was—of what he could become—ever again.
It felt nice to talk about Ellis. Or least have the opportunity to talk about Ellis.
Shit, it would be kind of nice to talk about himself and what being a wolf meant.
“When was the first time you shifted?” Zach asked, his thumbnail peeling off a corner of the bottle’s paper label. “Were you, like, a baby? Is it something that happens when you hit puberty?”
“Oh God, I would hate to have to deal with that and puberty at the same time.” Gibson nearly spit up the mouthful of cider he just sipped. “Hormones and your body going furry without any control would be my worst nightmare. So, thankfully the genetic dice roll evolved so we go wolf about the same time we learn how to walk. Having been around some of my younger cousins, still learning the difference between lifting their leg and peeing in a toilet, it’s the kind of thing that makes you swear off having kids. We kind of spend the first few years of our lives just among family, or at least until you learn how to control the shift. Nothing says ‘Oh my God, I’m living next to a pack of monsters’ like somebody’s baby turning into a wolf cub in the middle of the grocery store. It is a great way to pick up a date, though. Nothing like a big-eyed, fat-bellied puppy to start up a conversation with somebody hot.”
“Yeah, I’d agree it would work with a puppy. Having had your brother nearly biting off my ass, it’s not so cute when it’s two hundred plus pounds of fur and teeth chasing you down a mountain.”
“I’ve already apologized for that. I’d like to tell you that he’s sorry, but well, I know Ellis. He’s not sorry.” Gibson glanced over to where his brother normally lay. The mound of pillows was empty, but it was still daylight out, and Ellis liked to spend the afternoons roaming. “I come from a family of assholes.”
Ever since he’d pulled Zach out of the lake, Ellis was more restless, pacing by the front door before Gibson could even get coffee on and keening to get out before the sun rose. He’d been woken up that morning—although at 4:00 a.m., Gibson wasn’t quite willing to call it morning—by Ellis pawing at his shoulder. Stumbling downstairs from the loft’s king-size bed nearly took him out, and not for the first time, Gibson promised himself he would install runner lights along the cabin’s stairwell.
No matter what werewolf myths were out there, being a shifter sure as hell didn’t give anyone see-in-the-dark eyesight when it was pitch-black.
“I, too, come from a family of assholes. Mine like to take advantage of what they call financial opportunities, but in reality, they’re just savaging companies that could thrive if given a little assistance.” Zach pulled his legs up onto the cushion, crossing them, then leaned back into the sectional’s curve. The hems of his jeans hiked up, exposing his ankles and the line of scars running up his calves. “I was right there with them until one day the universe decided I needed a truck thrown at me and I woke up to a doctor leaning over my hospital bed, telling me in no uncertain terms that I’d never walk again.”
“Sometimes—okay, a lot of times—doctors are wrong.” Gibson stretched across the few feet that separated them, running the tip of his index finger over a shiny, florid scar. “Did it take you a long time to prove him wrong?”
“Almost a year, not quite one but close enough. I had a lot of help, and mostly I spent the year pissed off,” Zach admitted ruefully. “When it seemed like I was ready to start my life over again, my father called me into his study to tell me I’d been demoted because I hadn’t been there to close deals.”
“Jesus, and I thought my father was a raging dick,” he muttered. “So what did you do?”
“I’d spent most of my life trying to prove myself to him, and I guess right then, I realized he should’ve spent my lifetime proving himself to me. It wasn’t that I wasn’t someone he could be proud of, it was that he wasn’t somebody I looked up to.” Zach shivered under Gibson’s touch but didn’t pull away. “I wasn’t proud of my father. In my head I kept making excuses for why my family was the way they are and going along with their condemnation of family members they thought were a waste of time. So I told him to fuck off, cashed out all of my stock options, bought a bed-and-breakfast at Big Bear, then got my ass chased down the mountain by a man in a wolf suit. Okay, that last bit was probably insensitive.”
“No, you’ve got it right. We are pretty much humans wrapped in a wolf skin, unless you’re like Ellis, and you spend too much time that way.” It wasn’t so much the not knowing if his brother, or rather how much of his brother, remained inside of the wolf; it was wondering if he was ever going to see Ellis again. He missed his older brother. He even missed the pranks Ellis played on him and was torn between wanting to coax his brother out and letting him slip away into the form they had inside.
Zach’s hands touched his, and Gibson looked up, startled that he hadn’t heard the other man move or felt the shift of his weight on the couch. The ache Zach stoked in him flared at his touch, and Gibson struggled with his desire. It all seemed to be moving very quickly, too quickly for his liking, but he had never indulged himself in an emotional connection before. He didn’t know if his lust sucked out the reason from his brain, and feared once he slaked that thirst, Zach would fall away from him. There was a desperation in his chest, in his soul. He wanted to connect with someone else, and the pretty gift Ellis called him to collect from the lake seemed exactly the kind of person Gibson could fall in love with.
If there was one thing that terrified Gibson the most, it was falling in love. He’d seen what love had done to his parents, and he’d felt the devastation when he turned to his family for help, only to discover his cries were left unanswered. It was as if his entire life was a lie, a cheap tapestry of words and fond memories turned to ash in the fiery blaze of their distrust and condemnation. He didn’t want to risk his heart. Not again. But the urge to crawl across the couch, to straddle Zach’s long body, and to plunge himself into the simmering arousal between them was nearly as strong as the urge to wolf through a newly fallen snow.
It was its own hunt—that desire burning across his instincts—and his teeth ached to sink into Zach’s muscled throat. The animal part of him rode his blood, for once in his life united with the human part of him, blending and strengthening his urges, driving him to take what he wanted—what he needed—and make Zach his own.
“You okay?” Zach’s voice broke through the brittle shell Gibson’s longing formed around his mind. “You kind of drifted off there.”
“I’m fine. I guess I was just thinking about how fortuitous it was that Ellis chose you to drive into the lake,” Gibson remarked with a chuckle. “He used to try to set me up on blind dates, but half of the time he never asked the other guy if he was gay, and they’d show up
thinking they were there to watch a football game with a bunch of new friends, only to find me with a home-cooked meal and lit candles.”
“That’s kind of… did he do it on purpose?”
“No… see, that’s the thing about El, he never thought about… never imagined someone wouldn’t want his baby brother.” Gibson’s thoughts gentled, soothing away the frustrated barbs poking at him about Ellis. “I guess I should be flattered, but mostly at the time I was embarrassed.”
“What about the times when he wasn’t wrong?” Zach stroked Gibson’s knees with his thumbs, generating small warm circles through his jeans.
“He usually got the type right but couldn’t quite get the personality down. Ellis always ended up picking guys who were like him, brash and reckless. I love my brother with all of my heart, but the last thing I ever want to do is spend my life with somebody exactly like him.” Gibson shook his head and tried to ignore the tightness forming in his balls from Zach’s touch. “I need somebody who isn’t going to spend his life jumping off a cliff just to see if the water is deep enough to dive into. I don’t mind adventure, but I do like to temper it with common sense.”
There was a flash of wicked in Zach’s smile, and if his roving thumbs hadn’t already ignited Gibson’s interest, the naughtiness in his eyes would’ve done the trick. “What exactly do you call common—”
Even with his lack of social aptitude, Gibson knew there’d been a proposal of some sort on the tip of Zach’s tongue, but those words—however promising and erotic—never left the man’s lips.
A howl shattered the heat between them, its frightened ululating call shearing apart the silence surrounding the cabin. It was loud enough, terrified enough to rattle the windowpanes and bury an iciness into Gibson’s bones he’d not felt since he’d gotten lost as a little boy on a winter trail. There was a pain in the sound, one that transcended physical, a horrific, unthrottled wildness stark in its anguish.
Gibson was off the couch before he realized he was moving. The wolf rippled under his skin, insisting on being released, determined to run to his brother’s side, but Zach’s hand on his wrist stopped the change. The animalistic urge to tear apart the unknown threat subsided beneath the calm of Zach’s skin on his.
“I’ve got to go,” he whispered. “That’s Ellis. And he needs me.”
“I know,” Zach replied softly, but his fingers tightened, refusing to let Gibson go. “Let me help you. Let me help both of you. You’re going wolf. I can see it. Your eyes are going gold. Think about it. You might need someone human to talk Ellis out of trouble. Let me do that for you.”
“Fine, yeah, that makes sense.” Gibson swallowed at the fear choking him, oddly relieved to know Zach was willing to be by his side, fighting a battle that wasn’t his. The wolf in him grew stronger, his spine rippling with the change, and Gibson didn’t know if he could hold on much longer, his other half chafing at being restrained as Ellis warbled another mournful howl. “Try to keep up, but don’t hurt yourself doing so. The shotgun above the fireplace is loaded. Take it with you. Even if you don’t need to shoot it, you’ll at least have some protection in case it’s something Ellis and I can’t handle.”
“Are you worried about bears or something?” Zach moved across the cabin floor, headed toward the fireplace. “Are there even bears up here?”
“Yeah,” Gibson growled, feeling his jaw beginning to shift. “But I’m not worried about any bear. What I’m worried about is if it’s a human or, even worse, if it’s one of us.”
Six
THERE WAS nothing more terrifying than watching a man turn into something else.
As frightened as Zach had been when Ellis’s hot breath ghosted over his back, driving his flight response and stealing the reason from his brain, watching the black wolf peel apart, fall off in long sloughs from the human within, then revert back to a shaggy beast, was the scariest thing Zach had ever seen.
Or least it had been before Gibson shed his humanity, leaving a colossal stygian creature in his place. Even without Ellis nearby, Zach could see Gibson was healthier than his older brother. His fur was thick and glossy, catching the sunlight streaming through the open front door. The skin at the wolf’s feet was more molt than flesh, a tangle of dry parchment-thin ribbons, and they turned to dust when Gibson’s paws flattened them against the cabin’s floor.
The change—Gibson’s shift—had been agonizing to watch. It affected Zach deeply, casting a net of mystification and apprehension over him. Gripping the couch, he forced himself to remain standing, to remain fixed in place when Gibson’s body began to twist and bulge. He’d stripped quickly, then dropped onto all fours nearly immediately afterward, and his spine bent in a way that no human could have withstood. Unlike Ellis’s transformation, Gibson moved quicker through the shedding of his mundane form, but that didn’t make it any less viscerally horrific.
The pop of bones and then the jut of shoulder blades stretched the skin on Gibson’s back, thinning it out so it was nearly translucent. Then before Zach could take another breath—another staggered, sympathetic gasp—Gibson changed.
His pelt was a frosty shimmer for a few seconds, maybe even less, because time shifted alongside Gibson’s transformation. Eternities seemed to fold into a single blink of an eye, stretching out impossibly, then snapping back into a normal pace. It was both awe-inspiring and awful to watch Gibson curl in on himself, his legs stretching out behind him, thighs shortening and calves forming bends where no bend should be. His tail was a quick sprout of bone and skin from his spinal cord. Then with a shake of his body and the shedding of nearly transparent curls, a magnificent black wolf stood silhouetted against the afternoon sun.
Gibson was out the door before Zach could recover, trusting him to keep pace. Hefting a shotgun he had little to no chance of firing anywhere remotely near what he was aiming for, Zach followed the shadowy wolf over the uneven ground. They went uphill, toward where Ellis’s howl echoed not moments before. He didn’t know what they would find, he didn’t know what he could do to help, but he was going to be damned if he didn’t at least try.
If his physical therapist had been a sadist, then trudging at a fast jog behind the nimble black wolf while holding several pounds of metal and wood was a punishment found in one of Dante’s circles of hell. He lost track of how many times he twisted his ankle or felt a very real flash of fear when he could no longer see Gibson, only to find him a few yards ahead of where he looked. They didn’t have to go far, or at least he could still see the cabin behind them, but his body burned with the effort and then with the shock of seeing Ellis cowering against a rise of gigantic boulders with the sheriff who’d questioned Zach standing over him.
Ellis’s muzzle was bloodied, a gaping hole where a canine once was. The sheriff’s gun was drawn, but his knuckles were scraped raw, and a length of steel pipe lay on the ground at his feet. There were splatters of blood on the snow-speckled grasses in front of the boulders, and Ellis’s hackles were raised, his legs stiff and his stance threatening. He snarled when Zach approached, snapping his teeth at Gibson, who padded around the armed sheriff, his amber gaze shifting between his brother and the man who came to kill him.
Sheriff Pat Brown cast a long shadow across the rocky clearing, an Atlas of pressed brown cotton and fury. The look in his eyes and the hard stance he stood in while bearing his weapon down on Ellis told Zach there would be no reasoning with him. His hand wavered when Gibson slunk in front of him, his tucked-down long shaggy body stiff and threatening. The cop’s attention shifted for a split second, finding Zach’s face and then touching on the shotgun Zach clenched in his hands. Ellis moved, and the ground shifted beneath his enormous paws. A tumble of gravel broke the tense silence hanging over them, or rather stole away any calm left between them, because the noise snapped Brown’s crazed stare back to the wolves in front of him.
“One of these damn things killed my father. Maybe not this one but definitely this line. These things have been runn
ing loose for years,” the sheriff spat. “And one of them tried to kill you the other day. Don’t deny it. I’ve got a man coming to me this morning about you running scared down the mountain and ending up in the lake. Saw you and that big black monster from his fishing boat, but by the time he got it turned around, you were already gone.”
“I told you what happened.” Zach kept his voice low, hoping his calm tone could de-escalate the sheriff’s insatiable fury. “I wasn’t attacked. I fell. Gibson was out walking with his dog and found me. That’s all that happened. Did you see any bite marks?”
“No, but then you didn’t show me anything other than the bruises you had on your arms and face. Something didn’t add up with your story…. Something just didn’t sit right. Why would a guy like you go hiking so far off the trail and away from your property?” Brown shuffled his feet back when Gibson eased in front of his brother. Ellis snapped at Gibson’s throat, catching a chunk of his pelt and skin in a loose bite. The tussle was fierce, and Zach called out Gibson’s name, hoping to break up the fight. Brown glanced over his shoulder, then back to the wolves. “Is Keller out there? Keller! If you are out there, I want you to come out with your hands up.”
“He probably can’t hear you. Went to go get the SUV in case we needed to get the dog to the vet’s.” Zach fumbled over his tongue, the lie sounding unconvincing in his own ears. “He went down the mountain when I went up after we heard… Blackie bark. He sounded as if he was in pain.”
“Is that why you brought the shotgun? Or did Keller know I was already up here looking for his dogs?” His sneer dripped with the derision Zach could almost taste in the air. “Funny how you’ve been here how long? And you spend one night with Keller and his dogs, then suddenly you’re best friends? Maybe you buying the Wilson place is just a way for you and Keller to launder money or give you a cover for drug running. Seems kinda odd that he’s up here, doesn’t need a job but seems to always have a lot of money. Maybe that’s how the family operates. Maybe that’s why they’ve got these uncontrollable animals. To make sure no one gets close to their property.”
