First Shift (The Wolves of Rock Falls Book 1)

by AJ Skelly

  “You did so much better that time,” Sam encouraged as I wrapped the robe around me tighter and let him pull the other blanket up higher on my lap.

  “That was an impressive shift for one so new at this,” Rev agreed.

  “Um, thanks?” I stammered. How did one accept a compliment for changing to and from a wolf?

  “I have found the case I wanted to check, and I have some news for both of you.” He glanced seriously at Sam, and I got the feeling there was some unspoken communication going on between them. He cleared his throat. “Nearly two hundred years ago, there were two incidents of a human being bitten while the werewolf was in human form. The details of the incident are unimportant right now, but suffice to say Henry was quite the Casanova and bit Luella and Marcy while he was still human. Luella and Marcy both changed forms, much like you’re doing now, Megan, but by the next full moon, Marcy stopped shifting. She remained human. Luella did not. She stayed fully werewolf. This sort of thing is so rare, it’s hard to gauge what exactly is going to happen, but it stands to reason, based on these two cases, it’s possible you might not stay a wolf, Megan.”

  My heart pounded in my chest. I could go back to just being human?

  “How soon will we know if I’ll stay human?” I glanced at Sam and briefly noted how drawn and pale his face had become. Maybe it was a blow to his ego that his bite wasn’t strong enough to keep me wolf? I didn’t really care at the moment. I was most concerned about figuring out how to stay in skin. Permanently.

  Rev twiddled his fingers. “I’m sorry, but we will just have to wait until the next full moon. Unless you want to stay a wolf?”

  I shook my head vehemently. “No, thank you.”

  Rev glanced at Sam. Sam gave his head the barest of shakes. His mouth drew down at the corners, his blue eyes dark. I wondered what was going on inside his head. Rev conveyed something else with his eyes that made Sam’s brows draw down even further. I cleared my throat.

  The men snapped out of it, and Rev turned his attention back to me. The thermos clanged onto a little side table next to the couch.

  “Right. You want to stay human. Again, we won’t know if this is the case or not for a few weeks, but in the meantime, there are a few details we should work out. I know it’s late, and this is going to be a huge shock to you, but I think we should bring your grandpa over.”

  I gaped at him. “Tell me you are not serious? Grandpa can’t see me like this! It would give his poor ninety-year-old heart an attack for sure!” I couldn’t believe Rev would even suggest such a stupid thing.

  His brown lips pursed. “Meg.” He paused for nearly a full agonizing minute. “Your grandpa has known I’m a werewolf for years.”

  My jaw hit the floor. Nothing in the world, not even turning into a werewolf myself, could have prepared me for this. Grandpa knew Rev was a werewolf? He knew werewolves existed? I sat, totally stupefied, staring blankly at Rev’s face.

  Sam moved from the seat opposite me and sank down beside me.

  “Meg?”

  “I have no idea how to even respond to that.” Betrayed. I felt totally, completely betrayed. I wanted to doubt Rev’s word, to call him a liar, prove that my grandpa had no idea these creatures existed outside myths and fairytales. To know Grandpa had lied to me my entire life by covering up something this huge was unimaginable. How could he do that? How could the man I loved and adored more than anything else let me go out alone at night, knowing werewolves freely roamed the area?

  My breaths were coming too short, and tiny black spots quivered at the edges of my vision. Sam forced my head down between my knees. I gulped big breaths and gradually the quavering dots receded.

  I shook my head. How much more of this could I possibly handle before I came apart at the seams?

  “Why don’t you rest for a little bit. Shifting takes it out of you, and I imagine finding out so many new things is also pretty exhausting,” Sam volunteered.

  My head was spinning, and I had so many questions and fears floating around in my brain that the oblivion of sleep sounded more welcome by the second. I turned to Sam.

  “All right.” I was too tired to say anything else.

  “Do you want to just lie here on the couch? Or do you want a bed?”

  I glanced around. If Grandpa was coming over in a short while, I thought dozing on the couch might be the easiest option.

  Without another word, I curled down into the couch, hugging my knees to my chest. Sam covered me up with the blanket and then rested his hand on top of my calf. If I hadn’t been so tired, I might have objected. It somehow felt too familiar. As it was, his touch quieted the persona I was beginning to realize was the wolf. If it made her happy, then I’d put up with it. I didn’t think I’d be able to relax properly, but I was deeply asleep within seconds.

  ****

  I woke to the sounds of whispers around me. My senses were heightened. It wasn’t one of those sleeps where you wake up totally groggy and disoriented. I remembered everything and, oddly, missed the weight of Sam’s hand on my leg. Before alerting everyone else to my wakefulness, I listened.

  Grandpa was here. I could make out his low gravelly voice mixed with Rev’s smoother one, and though he didn’t say anything, I could sense Sam standing there with them, too.

  “I’m not sure about this, Rev. Of course, I think it’s the safest thing, but I’m not sure that it’s fair,” Grandpa said.

  “I agree, but what’s done is done, George. She needs help, and Sam is the only one in the position to give her the help she needs.”

  “Sam, what do you think about this? This obviously affects you, too,” Grandpa said.

  “It doesn’t matter what I think. This is about what’s best for Megan,” Sam replied softly. A dull thwap sounded, and I assumed someone clapped him on the shoulder.

  “You’re a credit to men everywhere,” Grandpa said solemnly. They fell silent, and I chose that moment to officially wake up.

  “Hi, Meggie-Girl,” Grandpa said as soon as my eyes opened. Joints protested as I shoved myself to sitting. Belying his age, Grandpa scooted himself over by me on the couch, putting an arm around my shoulders. I stiffened, still feeling utterly betrayed.

  “It was safer if you didn’t know, sweetheart,” he whispered to me as if reading my mind. I melted against him and buried my face in his wrinkled neck. I wanted to cry, sob out all my frustrations, but I reined it in.

  “How did you find out?” I asked. “About Rev?”

  Grandpa glanced at his oldest friend. I did too, and for the first time, really looked at him. He was the same age as my grandpa. They’d been army buddies back in World War II. Rev hadn’t aged a day over sixty-five, and Grandpa, he looked good for ninety, really good. But definitely a lot older than Rev.

  “Do you mind if I listen, too, sir?” Sam asked Grandpa. I was grudgingly impressed with his manners.

  “Of course not. It’s a simple enough tale.” Grandpa absently patted the seat beside him, and Rev and Sam both sat down opposite us on the sectional. I scooted up enough that I could watch Grandpa’s face as he told his story, but not so far away that I was out from under his arm.

  “Rev and I grew up in the area together. Went to school together, even went on a few double dates to establishments friendly to Negros.” Grandpa grinned and winked at Rev. Rev grinned back, sharing some long-ago memory. I forgot this would have all been before the Civil Rights Movement. To my knowledge, Rev had never married—so much for those double dates. “We also joined the army together. Rev is just a few months younger than I am, and he convinced me to wait and join up with him since my number hadn’t been called up yet. Your Grandma Elsie and I had been courting for three years, and with our parents’ blessings, we got married. Rev and I joined up in October of 1943 on his eighteenth birthday. Let me tell you, as keen as I was on fighting for my country, it was mighty hard to go off and leave your grandma behind. We wrote each other every week, though a lot of our letters didn’t make it through.
Rev and I were separated. Colored folks had their own divisions, but we kept in contact. Our divisions ended up stationed together, miraculously enough, in France. We were all engaged with the enemy when a mortar busted through and exploded. I caught a leg full of shrapnel and was bleeding out.”

  Grandpa paused and patted his leg. I’d never known him to even have a limp, though I had seen the long, jagged scars. “Rev wasn’t willing to let me die.” Grandpa paused again as he and Rev nodded at each other. “He gave me a field blood transfusion, right there in the middle of the battle. Without it I would have most certainly died. He had to let me in on the secret when I started developing some werewolf attributes. I could see and hear better than ever before. My leg completely healed in record time. I’ve never limped. Werewolves heal at a much faster rate than us mere humans. Of course, these things faded after a few months as I had no contact with his saliva—only his blood—but my leg was healed, and Rev had saved my life. And, of course, I was in on the secret.”

  I sat, completely dumbstruck. How could all of this have happened, and I never had a clue?

  “Did Grandma know?”

  “She knew something profound had happened between Rev and me on the field in France, but as far as she knew, it was just the sort of bond that men form when one saves the other’s life. She never knew Rev’s secret. Never knew werewolves existed.”

  I tried to digest this information that my grandpa, who still loved his wife with every molecule he possessed, had kept this monumental secret from her for their entire lives. Somehow it lessened my anger and betrayal toward Grandpa.

  “So now you know, Meggie-Girl,” Grandpa said softly as he soothingly stroked a hand over my tangled hair.

  “But there is so much I don’t know,” I offered, still lost in this sea of previously unknown.

  “That is true, but the good news is that you have friends that will help you. You have Rev and Sam. And you always have me. Always.”

  I glanced at Rev, his eyes warm and caring, and then at Sam, his face still drawn up tight, but his blue eyes pleading and…hopeful? I groaned. This was all too much at once. I needed to go back to sleep. Part of me wanted to stay awake and ask thousands of questions, but the rational part of my brain argued I’d function better and retain more, as well as have fewer hysterics, if I had some sleep and let my poor battered body rest.

  The suggestion to let me sleep on it was on the tip of my tongue right as I felt the tingling and fur started poking through my feet. I whimpered and turned panicked eyes to Grandpa.

  Rev grabbed his arm and helped him scoot backward away from me. “It’s all right, Meggie-Girl. I will love you just the same. You go on now. Sam is here to help you.”

  I tried to swallow past the knot in my throat, a hot, tight ball of emotion and then the shift took over. Sam was beside me, offering encouragement and instruction through my whimpers, screams, and howls.

  My shifts were taking less time each phase, and it was only a few minutes before I was back in my human skin, sweating and chilled to the bone.

  My eyes frantically swung to Grandpa, and my heart broke a little as he looked on me with the same steadfast love he’d always shown me, tear tracks running down his weathered cheeks. Assured that Grandpa was all right, and he wasn’t going to have a heart attack, my eyelids closed of their own volition, and I sank into the dark abyss of exhausted slumber.

  Chapter 13

  Sam

  Megan’s head dropped and her eyes closed. Her breathing evened, and she was gone. Totally gone. I briefly remembered after my first shifts, I slept nearly twenty straight hours. Megan was handling this so well in spite of everything. I sighed and staggered a hand through my hair.

  George Carmichael, a man I’d always admired, though I didn’t know him well, patted his granddaughter’s knee and then turned his eyes to me. I gulped. His was the stare of a concerned parent, not condescending, not accusing. My dad was still having a coronary, and here Mr. Carmichael sat, having witnessed Megan’s shift, calm and collected.

  “Well then, Sam. What are your intentions toward my granddaughter?”

  His question took me so aback that I jerked.

  “Excuse me, sir?”

  Mr. Carmichael’s left eyebrow rose up his forehead.

  Rev intervened, and my heart’s galloping pace slowed a fraction.

  “George, believe me, Sam’s intentions are wholly honorable. I was there, and I saw his resolve. He refused an Alpha’s order on Megan’s behalf.”

  Both white eyebrows traveled up to Mr. Carmichael’s hairline.

  “Is that so? Well then, young man, I’d like to shake your hand.”

  I got up and extended my hand. Mr. Carmichael’s hand was like tissue paper wrapped leather. Hard, gnarled, wrinkled, tough but fragile.

  “I, I want what’s best for Megan, sir.” I wanted her to stay a wolf, to stay with me. But above that, I wanted what was in her best interest. She obviously wanted to remain human. And based on Rev’s research, that could still be an option. I wanted her to have the choice. Too many choices in my life had been taken from me because I was the Alpha’s son and because certain things were expected of me. I didn’t want to be the one that took Meg’s choices away from her. I wanted her to love me, but I wanted her to love me on her own terms, not be stuck with me because she had no other choice. Not be stuck with me because my foolish desire to kiss her had ended in catastrophe.

  “Very well. Gentlemen,” Mr. Carmichael intoned, “we have some discussing to do, and I imagine your father will want to be a part of it,” he finished, gazing at me.

  Wolf shuddered. Neither of us wanted to face my father again so soon. I’d messed up enough for one night—for a lifetime—and had no desire to revisit the wrath of my father.

  “You know, I think for now, we could do all of this via a phone call with Dominic. That might be easiest at the moment. Any objections?”

  Bless you, Rev.

  ****

  After a few snatched hours of sleep on the couch opposite Meg—I happily gave up my bed so Rev could have a spot to lay down that wasn’t a bunk bed while Mr. Carmichael took the queen—I stretched sleepily. My eyelids fluttered open, and I found Meg’s hazel eyes watching me carefully. Her body had finally given up last night, too tired for more shifts. I’d stayed awake, mostly talking with Rev and Mr. Carmichael, but also to ensure Meg wouldn’t need me for another shift, for several more hours after Meg dropped off last night. My own body protested being awake, but there was a lot of ground to be covered today.

  Her eyes were beautiful but unreadable, and we simply held each other’s gaze for a few minutes. I could hear even breaths and knew the others were both still deeply asleep.

  “How do you feel this morning?” I finally asked softly.

  She cocked her head to the side—amazingly like a wolf would do when studying a new curiosity.

  “I’m stiff, but my body feels fairly good otherwise. A lot better than I expected,” she whispered back. “I can see the individual hairs on your jaw,” she quietly marveled. “And Grandpa’s heartbeat is much more regular than the doctor thought at his last check up.” The right side of her mouth tipped up the tiniest bit.

  I nodded. “It sounds like some of the changes are already making themselves known.”

  “Will I start shifting again like I did last night?” Only a hint of fear lingered in her voice.

  “You will probably shift randomly a few times today, but the shifting will speed up more once the moon is up tonight.”

  She grimaced. “How long does the uncontrollable shifting last?”

  “Usually only the first two or three days. A few days more during the nighttime hours. But it won’t hurt for that long.”

  “Will I be able to…go out in public?” A new fear lit her eyes. “Will I be able to go back to school? I can’t stay out indefinitely! My GPA needs to stay where it is!”

  “Calm down.” I tried to sound soothing with a voice still scratchy fro
m sleep. “We have fall break this week. We’re off Monday and Tuesday. You’ll be fine during the day by Wednesday. No problem. You can go back to school, and nobody will be the wiser.”

  “Except Rachel.”

  My turn to grimace. “Yes. Except Rachel.”

  “I need to call her soon. What if I start to shift in class?” Her eyes were wide, her mouth a grim line. There was rustling behind me. Rev would be awake soon.

  “Well.” I wasn’t sure how to ease into this one. “I can help your wolf settle for short periods of time.”

  She suspiciously raised an eyebrow. “How?”

  I cleared my throat. “The same way I did back at my house last night.”

  “Which is actually a good starting point for a few things we need to discuss today,” Rev interjected from my bed behind the couch.

  Megan pursed her lips, clearly not happy or satisfied with my answer—possibly Rev’s intrusion. We hadn’t talked about the near-kiss-that-ended-with-a-bite or the one I laid on her last night to stop her shift.

  “Sam, would you call Steve Rivers and tell him I said to bring over coffee and some breakfast? They should be back from their campout by now.”

  I nodded, snagged my phone from the end table, and dialed their landline. Steve’s daughter, Raven, picked up. “Hello?”

  “Hey, Raven, it’s Sam.”

  “Oh! Good morning. You want to talk to Cade?” Raven was a year behind me and a sweet girl. Her brother, Cade, and I had been best friends since we were babies. Their dad worked a lot with Rev and my dad on pack business when he wasn’t running his own construction company. He was a decent, hard-working guy and someone I’d always liked and respected.

  “Good morning. Yes, but I need to talk to your dad first. Is he around?”

  “Just a sec.”

  “This is Steve.”