Ella came over and trotted circles around him, as if admiring him. Isaiah hoped he at least had shifted with everything in the right places. It wasn’t as weird as he’d thought it would be. Four paws, a tail, and a nose that was far too long.
Walking was where things got awkward for him, but with Ella’s encouragement he managed to take a few first tentative steps, followed by a quick lope. It wasn’t so bad. He didn’t know how to shift back at all, but being a wolf was nice. He felt lighter and far less clumsy as he trotted around on his four paws and managed to keep his balance and not trip over his long legs.
He nearly ran into someone else’s legs, though. Isaiah stopped short and looked up to find Marcus smiling at him. “I told you,” he said as he ran his fingers from Isaiah’s forehead to behind his ears.
Isaiah looked to Ella and wished he knew how to thank her for coming to help him, but she was already gone. He looked to Marcus and wasn’t sure how to get back to being a person. Ella hadn’t shown him that. He let out a pathetic little whine. He couldn’t be trapped in this body forever. He wanted to be able to switch back and forth.
But Marcus must have been able to guess what his problem was, because he knelt down in front of him and pressed his forehead against his own. Slowly he felt his body coming back to normal. The blast of cold air against his bare skin was the worst of it. He must have ruined Marcus’s pants when he shifted, because there wasn’t anything left on him now.
“How did you figure out how to shift? I can bring you back, and I can help you shift now that you have already done it for yourself, but I couldn’t get you through that first one,” Marcus said as he pulled back.
He didn’t go far. Isaiah held onto his arm for support and stumbled back into the cabin on weak legs.
Isaiah couldn’t reveal that Ella had helped him. He’d promised. But he didn’t want to take all the credit for it either because without her help he wouldn’t have ever known what he actually was, which was definitely a werewolf. “Uh. I can’t tell you.”
Marcus snorted. “Of course you can.”
They lay back down on the bed together and Isaiah shook his head. “No, I really can’t. I’m sorry.”
Marcus pursed his lips, and after a while he nodded. “That’s okay. I’m glad you figured it out, however it happened.”
“I am too.” Isaiah flopped onto his back and stared up at the ceiling. “Goodnight?”
“You just found out that you’re really a werewolf and now you’re ready for bed?” Marcus chuckled.
“I’m tired. I can process this more tomorrow. But shifting hurts, and I’m sore.”
Marcus yawned and put an arm around his stomach. “Yeah, it does. Goodnight.” He kissed Isaiah’s cheek and Isaiah smiled as Marcus fell asleep beside him, but he was still awake. His world had just gotten a whole lot weirder, but so much better.
* * * *
Marcus made sure to make Isaiah’s cabin a top priority. That decision got the job done in three days instead of the week he’d first estimated, and he was excited to share the cabin with Isaiah once it was complete. He’d originally wanted Isaiah to help with it, but he was glad that Isaiah was learning how to gain control of his shifts instead. He could help on another cabin. There would always be more of them to complete. There would always be packs that needed quick houses built as they expanded if nothing else, and his own pack had no shortage of children running around who would eventually move out and want their own places too.
As the finishing touches were being put up in the cabin, Marcus went in search of Isaiah. He checked the lake first, then the picnic tables where they all ate, but it wasn’t until he checked the orchard that he found him stretched out in the grass between a few newly planted trees.
“Did you help get more of them in the ground?” Marcus asked him as he came up.
Isaiah sat up and smiled at him. “Paws are good for digging.”
Marcus laughed. “Yes, they are. Come on, I want to show you something.”
Isaiah got up in a hurry and took his hand. They had a connection, one Marcus wasn’t going to argue with, and he hoped to pursue it when things were calmer. Isaiah been through so much in just a week. But Marcus was definitely thinking of him as his own, which was dangerous territory when he didn’t know if Isaiah felt the same way about him or if he’d just been someone to have fun with.
“This is your place,” Marcus said proudly.
He looked over to see Isaiah grinning and Marcus let go of his hand to be able to nudge him forward. Isaiah didn’t take long at all to go through the little cabin. There wasn’t a lot to see, anyway. But he had his own bed behind a folding screen to give him some privacy, and a little kitchen. “The toilet and shower are through that door. You don’t have a ton of closet space, but the bed has storage under it, and—” He didn’t get to say anything else before Isaiah was kissing him.
“I’m glad you like it,” Marcus said when Isaiah let him take a breath.
Isaiah laughed. “I do. I love it. I have my own place. And my own alpha boyfriend?”
Snorting, Marcus shook his head. “That wasn’t quite how I was going to approach that subject.”
“But you were thinking about it. Weren’t you?” Isaiah sat down on his new bed and Marcus sat beside him.
“I was. You can be with whoever you want in the pack, though, you don’t have to be exclusive to me.”
Isaiah slid over his lap and gave him a gentle kiss. “I want to, though. I like being around you. And this thing inside me, this wolf, whatever this is—I feel better with you since finding out who I really am. It’s like things have settled inside of me. I’m helping without being asked. I’m talking to people without knowing who they are. Whatever clicked in me, whatever changed, it’s made me more outgoing and more willing. And, with that, I want to have something more solid with you. I want exclusive. I want you to be mine.”
Marcus wrapped his arms around Isaiah’s waist. “I want that too.”
The End
You may also enjoy the following from eXtasy Books Inc:
Unwanted Omega
Caitlin Ricci
Excerpt
Helena chose the music when I drove. It kept her off telling me how to drive. Today she put on something soft and slow as I got us onto I-70. We had a long way to go and I didn’t mind the gentler choice in music. It was what she normally played to get Jonathan to go to sleep when he was being fussy, but I had no idea what the actual name of the band was. I hadn’t really paid all that much attention to her music. We all had other things on our minds.
“Who is this?” I asked her as I set the cruise control and leaned back in the seat.
She glanced at me then went back to looking out the window. “The Weepies. Thomas...”
I caught the purse of her lips out of the corner of my eye. She’d chosen to wear makeup today. A deep red lipstick that made her skin look even paler. She had the classic beauty of Elizabeth Taylor. We could have been happy together, but I was pretty sure she was never going to forgive me for not fighting back when we’d been ordered to have a child. She’d hated it, and she’d hated me for what I’d had to do to her.
It wasn’t like I’d enjoyed having sex with my sister’s girlfriend, but I had come and that was enough for Helena.
“Whatever it is, Helena, can it wait until after we’re done with Abraham?” I asked her.
She sighed. I knew she wanted to argue. I didn’t blame her for that at all. I wasn’t her favorite person by far and I knew that I wasn’t easy to get along with either, though I was trying.
“Be our alpha. Overthrow Abraham,” she urged me.
Talking like that was treason, but I knew there was no way he could hear us. We’d checked the car for bugs multiple times. We were safe from his prying eyes. “Helena, as angry as you are about having to birth a child for the pack—”
She hissed at me and I shut up instantly. “I love our son. Don’t you do
ubt that.”
“I don’t,” I assured her, though I knew if she and Lily could have had a child without my involvement, she would have gladly chosen that. I would have, too.
Helena turned in her seat to be able to glare at me better. “Don’t you want to be happy though, Thomas? Honestly? If you could have a man in your life? If you could fall in love? Wouldn’t you want that? We made a child. We’re stuck with each other. Lily isn’t so lucky. I can’t have her taken from us.”
“If I tried to move against him Abraham would have our heads and I can’t risk him coming after you, or Jonathan, or Lily. Don’t ask me to risk our family.”
“You’re risking your sister every day you leave him in power over us,” she argued. “He paid for our house and he takes care of us financially, and I know that may make things easy for us at times since we don’t have to work beyond taking care of our son but that’s not enough of a reason to risk Lily.”
The worst part of it was that I knew she was right. We could get to his house and he could tell me that my sister was going to move in with a strange man and bear his child and I would have no say. Neither would she. It was only luck that Lily and Helena had fallen in love, that they’d gotten along at all. We’d certainly never had a say in it or designed it that way at all. If they hadn’t become instant friends, things would be even more miserable for us.
“You don’t care that she could be raped every day for the rest of her life and—”
I had to pull over onto the side of the highway. My shift was too close, and I was barely in control of myself as it was. I tightened my hands over the steering wheel. The worn-out leather was rough against my palms.
“I won’t let that happen.”
Helena came closer, leaning her cheek against my shoulder. “Thomas, you need to do something. If my voice meant anything in this pack, I would have used it long ago. I love her so much and I hate that at any moment Abraham can take her away from me. From us. Don’t let him. Please. Don’t doom your sister to that life. She got lucky with the last one. It was seen as his fault that she couldn’t get pregnant.”
I got back on the road. We were expected to be at Abraham’s house at nine. Being late wouldn’t be good for either of us, and it would draw even more of his attention onto us. The best thing we could hope to be with him was some footnote in his ledger. Just the small family who lived on the plains and didn’t make trouble for him or anyone else. The pack was large. We were spread all over the state, but no one lived more than two hours away from him. Well within distance to come when we were called to his side. Abraham kept a few of the pack with him sometimes, but never more than two or three. He led our pack through financial control, and through the fear he kept us all in constantly.
“Thomas...”
I huffed. “I’ll think about it.”
“That’s not good enough. What if—”
I couldn’t. I just couldn’t with her anymore. I needed to drive. And I needed to not be thinking about some werewolf raping my little sister all for the sake of adding more children for the pack so that Abraham had more people to control. “Please. Enough. I’ll think about it. But that’s the best I can do. And I won’t promise you more than that.”
We couldn’t leave the pack. He had already said that none of us were allowed to just up and leave him. As fertile, able bodied members of his pack he would rather see us dead than with someone else’s pack. So that left someone taking over the pack from him. As much as Helena wanted that to be me, I didn’t see how it ever would be. I wasn’t a fighter, but then again, I’d been a teenager when Lily had been given to her last mate. So had she, but I hadn’t realized what it had meant at the time. Now I wish I had fought harder back then, and I knew I wouldn’t be okay with Abraham taking her away from me again.
I pulled off I-70 and went south. We were almost there, and I felt my skin tingling the closer we got to the alpha. Helena rubbed her arms, so she must have been feeling it as well. That simple awareness to let us know that we were near him. Maybe to some werewolves it felt good. I hated that sensation. I hated knowing that he was nearby. That I was stuck with him for an alpha when almost anyone else would have been better.
Abraham lived in a normal-looking house. Just four bedrooms, two bathrooms, and light gray siding. None of the humans who lived on his street would have had any idea that he was an alpha werewolf, or that the people who visited him each week were also werewolves.
Helena could have easily gotten the door for herself, but once I was parked along the street in front of his house I got out and opened her door for her. She gave me a look, but it was only on her face for a moment before she was back to looking completely calm again. She hated that I had to get the door for her. It was just another way that Abraham controlled us through his expectations of the pack and how good werewolves treated each other. The women accepted the help of the men and were supposed to want to be baby making machines. We were simply supposed to want to have sex with them all day and let them raise our children, I guessed. Neither prospect worked for us.
I took her hand and she plastered a smile on her face. “Less teeth,” I whispered. She looked like she wanted to sink her canines into his throat and leave him on the rug to bleed out.
She adjusted her smile and then she bit her sharp nails into my palm. I winced and led her up the pathway toward Abraham’s front door.
About the Author
Caitlin Ricci has been writing professionally since 2012 and since then has released over a hundred stories including some award winners. Though she writes in many genres, all of her stories are about finding love and happily ever after. She lives on a small farm in Missouri with her dogs, goats, and husband.
[email protected]
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