by Eden Beck
Too close.
Lydia shrugs. I know she’s not really in agreement with it either, but she also knows her place in the pack. She knows that this is the way things are done.
I’m not quite at that point yet, and to be honest, I’m not sure I ever will be.
“Sometimes the old rituals don’t make any sense, and sometimes they do. The important thing is that we keep the ones that do make sense close to our chest,” she says, after forcing her eyes away from the shifters mulling outside on the grass. There’s too many of them. Too many.
“What does that even mean?”
“It means,” she says, glancing over at me before looking just as quickly away. “That you should follow your instincts.”
I wait until she’s looked away to allow a small smile to spread across my face.
I like talking with Lydia. Even with the way she speaks in riddles, she still seems to make more sense to me than nearly everyone else most of the time.
Our moment of peace is interrupted moments later when the boys come barreling into the room, nearly knocking Lydia over as they each give her a kiss on the cheek in turn. As soon as she’s able to regain her balance, she looks at them with a raised eyebrow.
“Uh oh,” Kaleb says when he sees her expression. “What did we do?”
Lydia laughs. “Nothing. But it’s what you are going to do today that matters.”
The look on their faces is veiled. It’s Rory who swaggers forward, leaning over onto the counter with raised eyebrows of his own.
“And what is it we’re supposed to be doing today?” he asks, giving the room a quick, sweeping look. “According to you, anyway.”
Marlowe nudges him, but Lydia doesn’t take offense. She just eyes her eldest son with a look that, had it lingered any longer, would have even made Rory squirm.
“I want you to take Sabrina deep into the woods. She’s antsy here. She might not be full shifter yet, but there should be some things you can show her already.”
I sit forward suddenly, eyes alight. “Do you mean …”
“I mean,” Lydia says, eying all three of her sons now, “I want you to show her the joys of being a wolf-shifter. Or start to, at the very least.”
“But since she hasn’t shifted yet, how are we supposed to—”
Marlowe doesn’t get a chance to finish his sentence before Lydia interrupts him.
“She doesn’t need to have shifted yet. She’s only one night away from her first shift and her body is already primed. She might not look it, but she’s already sensitive to the wolfish nature. Look at her,” she says as she waves her hand toward me. “Trust me. I know this better than anyone else here. And besides …”
She trails off a moment, one hand reaching out to brush a lock of hair out of my eyes. “She needs some comforting today. Turning isn’t for the faint of heart. Take her and show her a beautiful day.”
Even though she keeps her eyes on me, I know she’s trying hard to keep from glancing out the window. I know what she means. Get her away from here.
And I’m not about to disagree.
After a moment, Lydia winks at me and I have to stifle a giggle. She acts more like my mom than my own mother did, and I am honestly happy to have a day of revelry with the boys. Anything that will get me out of here and having to watch Remus and that awful wolf-girl cozying up to Romulus, will be a welcome reprieve.
“Okay,” Kaleb says as he hops up from the table. “Sounds good to me. Let’s go!”
He grabs my arm to pull me along, but I am still firmly gripping my coffee cup which sloshes around in my hand at the jerking motion.
“Wait a second,” I say. “I haven’t finished my—”
“Just go,” Lydia says. “You won’t need the caffeine when they show you all the wondrous things in the woods.”
“I’ve already seen the woods,” I say to her, a little confused and a little bit just trying to stall for time while I bring the cup back closer to my lips.
“Not like this,” she says with one of her secret smiles.
The boys actually seem super excited about our day galivanting off in the forest together. I’m happily surprised by their enthusiasm. With all of Romulus’ alpha emotions seeping into his pack, I thought for sure that the boys would rather stay at the house and intermingle with Remus pack as Romulus seems to be so smitten with doing. I guess maybe I have more of a hold on the boys that even their father and pack leader does.
That thought, above all, makes me smile.
“What are you smiling about?” Marlowe asks when he sees my grin.
We’ve managed to slip away from the packs gathered around the house without being followed. I expected it to be much more difficult, what with the way they’ve been watching me like prey over the last week.
“Just random thought,” I say. Even if they are more influenced by me, their allegiance to Romulus is strong and definitely not something that I want to get between.
We walk deep into the forest, deeper than I’ve ever been, I think. The further we get, the more excitement I feel. I can’t tell if the excitement is just coming from me or if it’s coming from the boys too.
“Is there a specific place we’re going?” I ask, wondering how much longer my feet will keep up and really wishing right about now that I had four paws instead.
“Yes,” Rory says with an extremely purposeful look on his face. I know that look. It’s the look he gets when he isn’t going to explain any further.
So I just nod, asking no more questions as we keep pressing forward.
It’s not just my own anxious energy driving us onward, further away from the house and the tension of the packs surrounding it.
Rory takes my hand and it makes it a little easier not to fall behind. I start to wonder why it is that I always seem to have trouble keeping up with them, even when they’re in their human form.
Even if Rory isn’t going to tell me where we’re headed, he can’t deny me this. Not now.
Not anymore.
“Hey,” I ask as we’re walking, pausing only for a second to pick my way over a particularly large log fallen across our path. “Do some of your wolf-shifter abilities carry over to your human side as well? I mean, I know sometimes the eyes do, but what about the rest?”
“Is there something in particular you want to know?” Marlowe asks as he turns around to look over his shoulder at me.
“Well, yeah kind of. You guys are always so much faster than me and I’m wondering if it has something to do with—”
“It does,” Rory interrupts to answer me. “As much as we’d all like to claim we’re just naturally superior in all ways …”
That comment gets him a jab in the ribs from Kaleb before he continues on.
“When you experience your first shift, it will all become so much more clear to you. You will become a wolf shifter; not just merely change back and forth between human and wolf. It’s not just the ability to transform that makes you a shifter, it’s who you are,” he says, once he’s regained his breath. “Things that your wolf form can sense and feel will bleed through into your human form. Things like increased senses, speed, strength … primal arousal.”
“The same holds true for things that your human self can feel which will bleed over into your wolf form. That is why, even as a wolf, I could watch over you and feel the sense of longing and protectiveness, the sense of conscience and self-restraint. Your two forms are not two separate identities; they are one. You will become one, enhanced version of yourself.”
The way that Rory describes it puts every book I’ve ever read and every movie I’ve ever watched to shame. Maybe what Lydia once said makes sense. Maybe there’s a reason so much of their culture isn’t written down.
“I can’t wait to experience that,” I say, suddenly feeling small among the trees. “There’s only one more day to go, I know, but I feel like it is taking forever.”
All three guys laugh, their footsteps faltering as I realize we’ve finally
reached our destination. It must have been at least a two-hour hike, maybe longer. The sun has risen high in the sky, high enough to filter down in sunlit patches between the crisscrossing branches overhead.
“Wow,” I say, looking out over the grassy enclave nestled between thickets of trees. The trees thin overhead, allowing more of that sunshine to pass through, illuminating the rocky banks of a stream leading up to a cascading waterfall at the far end. The enclave is bordered with brilliant wildflowers and encircled by protective trees that seem to be holding on to each other with their branches, interwoven around us into a kind of barrier.
It is by far the most magical place that I’ve ever seen.
“Why didn’t you ever take me here before?” I ask, prying my hand from Rory’s to stumble a few footsteps forward.
“The timing just never was right before,” Marlowe says. “But now …”
“Now it is?” I say, glancing back at him and the others once.
I turn back and walk to the edge of the small sanctuary to look over the side of the precipice at the mouth of the waterfall. It’s brilliant, the water glittering like dark jewels and the sound of the rushing water like the thrum of the Earth’s very own energy. Or, at least, how I’d imagine it would sound if it had a sound.
“Careful,” Kaleb says to me as I stand precariously close to the edge. “That moss is slippery.”
I pretend to lose my balance and fall, but quickly realize my mistake as all three sets of eyes begin to glow and the boys’ bodies suddenly look as though they’re going to leap over the side of the cliff in an effort to save me.
“Easy,” I say. “I’m sorry, I was just kidding.”
The three of them calm down, the color fading from their eyes as I take note of the fact that it’s probably not a good idea for me to tease being in danger with any of them around. Not when they’re still primed to react like that.
“Okay,” I say as I walk back over to where the guys stand. “What is it that Lydia wanted you to show me?”
“She seems to think that since your transformation has already begun and since your first shift will be tomorrow night, that your senses are already becoming heightened,” Rory says.
“Is she right?”
“I don’t know, but I guess we’ll see.” He grins. “Which sense do you want to start with?”
“Umm, smell,” I say, blurting out the first thing that comes to mind.
“Okay,” he says. “This ought to be fun.”
Rory gently pulls me toward the ground until I am sitting on the soft pile of moss.
“Close your eyes,” he says.
I close my eyes and hear movement. It sounds as if all three of them have left, or at least backed farther away from me.
“We’re going to come close to you without touching you and without speaking,” he says. “You have to try to guess which one of us is near you, and you can’t open your eyes. Use your sense of scent only. Wolves have excellent senses of smell. As a shifter, you’ll be able to not only identify people by their scent, but also know when they are nearby or if where they last were, just by the scent in the air.”
“Okay,” I say, feeling less than confident in my ability to do this than before the transformation. At least then, no one expected me to be able to.
I hear them rustle around some more and I try to stay still and keep my eyes shut. I focus on the darkness, my mind emptying until all it’s thinking about is the pattern of my own breath.
In a few moments, I can feel the heat of someone next to me, not necessarily in front of me but closer to my left side. I lift my face up into the air and inhale. I can smell the lingering smoke of a bonfire clinging to his clothes and the salacious scent of an eager lust emanating from his skin.
Lust.
I didn’t know it had a scent before.
I have no doubt in my mind that it’s Kaleb who is on my left side. But there’s more than just his scent in the air. There’s another smell to my right, one that is musky like the moments following a fresh rain and that smells earthy and confidently tempting.
Marlowe.
I suppose that by process of elimination alone I would have been able to know that Rory was the only one missing. I wouldn’t have even needed to try to inhale the air deeply in order to find him, but I do anyway because I can’t help but be called to his scent.
Behind me, there is a smell that I can’t resist, as if it’s a blend crafted perfectly to appeal to my most olfactory desires; emitting an aroma that smells like lavender and leather, calm and strength.
“That’s amazing,” I say as I open my eyes to see each of the three of them exactly where I thought they would be.
“Hey, no fair!” Kaleb says. “You didn’t tell us who you thought was who.”
“Oh, sorry,” I say, laughing. “But I swear I knew where each of you were.”
I turn behind me to see Rory and find him so close that even though we aren’t touching, I can feel the narrow sliver of space between us.
“I want to try more,” I say as I look up at him. “I want to try it all.”
10
Sabrina
A shiver runs through me.
This … all of this … it’s just the beginning.
“Taste,” I say.
“What?” Rory looks at me with his head cocked slightly, as if I’ve woken him from a dream. And in a way, I have. He’s been staring at me ravenously, his eyes drinking in the shape of my lips so close to his.
“I want to try the sense of taste next,” I say.
We haven’t moved our faces apart yet. I’m on my knees, as is he, with my body facing away from him but my head turned over my shoulder to look behind me so that our faces are nearly touching.
I should be enraptured by him too, so close to me with his now overwhelmingly intoxicating scent, but I’m too distracted.
Lydia had been right; I might still be in the middle of turning, but things are definitely already starting to change within me. Everything feels more real, more saturated with experience, than it was before. It’s as if everything I’m trying, I’m trying for the first time.
And in essence, I am.
As my new self.
Taste. I can taste the scent of the boys on my tongue already. It’s salt and musk.
I want to taste everything.
Maybe there will be berries or herbs out here in the forest that they will test my senses with, but that thought is wiped away as quickly as I think it.
The boys clearly have another taste in mind.
In the instant that I stay looking at Rory, just a split second after the word “taste” has left my lips, he leans forward and kisses me. I fall a bit backward as my body turns around inadvertently to face him and he catches me in his arms. In one swift movement, he brings me up to hold against his chest.
His tongue pushes into my mouth and even though every time that I had ever kissed Rory before was an exhilarating temptation; this time it is so much more.
I’ve felt the heat growing between us for days, ever since the night of the wedding. I just hadn’t paid as much attention to it until now. Now … now … it’s overwhelming.
I wouldn’t be able to put this feeling into words if someone asked me to. I can barely piece it together in my own mind, drowning as I am in the pleasure of it. It’s as though I can taste the longing on his tongue and the passion on his lips.
I can taste the very matter that makes up his soul and rests on the tip of his tongue to share with me.
If I had thought the scents were overwhelming; this is completely consuming. I could stay here in this spot kissing him, and tasting him, until the night comes and goes and comes again.
But Marlowe doesn’t seem too keen on letting that happen. Not, at least, without claiming his share. He bumps purposefully into Rory to knock him off-balance and break up our kiss, his arms reaching to replace his brothers’.
Rory makes a small growling noise at him under his breath. Sometimes it’s
hard to tell whether they’re bantering or being seriously jealous with each other.
“I think she gets the point,” Marlowe says with a snort.
I laugh. He’s not wrong. I did definitely get the point.
“What about touch?” I ask, hardly able to catch my own breath. I find myself staring at Marlowe’s lips, tracing the shape of them. I want to taste them too.
And not just his lips.
My eyes drop to the tip of his sharp jaw, the slope of his shoulders, his well-formed torso … and then drop lower. My hand reaches towards the top of his pants, absentmindedly biting my bottom lip as I hook one finger through his belt loop.
“I want to feel you,” I say in a breathy whisper.
It’s as if, all of a sudden, all the noises of the forest have ceased.
All the rest of the world disappears. It is only me, Marlowe, Rory, and Kaleb now.
We’ve been married for nearly a week, but I’ve barely touched them. They’ve barely touched me. Out of respect for the turning, we’re supposed to wait.
I know we have to wait, but … but wait how long?
The three of them exchange glances that I can immediately read. I don’t know if it’s my human nature or the fact that I’m turning, but there is no mistaking the look in their eyes.
I stare back at them as I wait to see what they’re going to do.
“We can’t,” Rory says, thought I can tell it pains him. “She hasn’t finished turning yet.”
“And?” Kaleb says. “We’re already married, and the transformation has already begun. How do you know we can’t yet?”
His hand reaches out to me, stopping just before the back of one finger brushes against the exposed flesh of my shoulder. It hovers there, torturously so, so that I can sense him without actually feeling him.
“He’s kind of right,” Marlowe says, to all of our surprise. He’s not looking at his brothers, he’s looking at me. There’s a hunger in his eyes. “There’s nothing in the rules that says we can’t be together in the middle of the transformation.”
