Shiftless

Chapter 6

It had been so long since I'd turned wolf that I'd forgotten how it felt to subsume myself into her moods and desires. The wolf was still me, but the animal side of our nature was in charge of our actions, and everything we saw was filtered through her world view. Both of us were exuberant at the chance to run through the woods—it felt like taking off my bra at the end of a long work day, like reaching the high point of a perfect novel. Unchained hunt, my wolf added. No matter how we parsed the feelings, they were relief and excitement rolled into one.

My wolf was more restrained than I remembered, though. She still took in every squirrel and bird moving through the forest, but age allowed her to choose whether to give chase. We stalked a rabbit for half an hour, then let it go at the last minute. Cheeseburger, she told me, and I was almost sure the wolf was bartering with our human side. She seemed to recognize that spilling blood during her first run in six years would make another shift highly unlikely in the near future, but the wolf wanted to make it plain that she craved red meat. It felt strange to be making a deal with my animal side since I was used to her just taking what she wanted, but maybe the last decade had matured us both to the point where we could act as a team again.

We paused beside a small stream to lap up the cool water, but stopped when our nose picked up the scent of another wolf where one didn't belong. Keith had never shifted all the way, so we shouldn't be smelling my nephew's wolf, but this was obviously a werewolf, and a male. Alpha male, my wolf corrected. We snarled in unison, our mothering instincts aroused by an unrelated male werewolf near Keith during his first shift.

The trouble was that alpha male werewolves had a nearly insurmountable urge to kill unrelated males as the youngsters reached the age of their first change. The behavior was a relic of our more primal days, when a young male in an alpha's territory might be angling for his position, spurring the pack leader to squelch the challenge before it could be issued. The problem didn't often come up, though, because everyone was related either by blood or by marriage in most packs, and some modern males had also learned to ignore the urge even around strangers. But not everyone could overpower his wolf...or wanted to. Keith wouldn't be safe with an unknown alpha male lurking around.

The wolf and I turned to follow the male's scent, and I wasn't sure which of us was in charge as we put our nose to the ground and traced his path upstream through the trees. It smelled like the alpha had been there only hours previously, and the sinuous path suggested he'd lollygagged about, wandering through the woods as if they were his own. Another rumble came deep in our throats as we smelled where the male had marked his territory on the side of a lightning-scarred oak tree at the crest of the ridge.

Another few feet, and the wolf himself came into view. He was lounging on the leaf litter, where a gap in the canopy caused a ray of sun to warm his hide. The huge wolf was clearly well aware of our approach, but he simply yawned and laid his chin back down on his paws as we came closer, closing his eyes as if he was planning on finishing out his nap. And I wasn't surprised by his behavior, either, because I recognized the canine's coloration. The alpha male was Wolfie.

***

My wolf urged us forward to sniff under the alpha's tail, but I pushed her down and fought to initiate the shift back into human form. As a canine, Wolfie was nearly double my size, and I suspected his human form was equally imposing, but I trusted my tongue more than I did my feet to get me out of this mess. I'd simply explain to the mutt that he was trespassing on private property, would threaten him with a restraining order if necessary, and would then head back down the hill to check on Keith. I had no idea why Wolfie was nosing around my nephew, but I wouldn't feel safe until the kid was once again under my watchful eye.