How the heck—oh, Josh has been talking to Chris. “Yeah. They make a mean ginger beef.”
“Say hi for me,” she said, and hung up.
When I returned to the bathroom, the mirror revealed the silly grin on my face. I toweled off and pulled on a tee shirt and sweats—glad I didn’t have to hide my injuries with long sleeves while at home. The slices on my thighs had almost healed but were still tender to the touch. My arms were further along, and I traced the scars with a finger—the slashes had already faded from angry pink to interconnected white lines.
Eat your heart out, Chris. Pushing dark thoughts of Dillon to the back of my mind, I left the suite and joined Peter, Josh, and Keen upstairs.
I arrived to see Josh feeding Keen a deep-fried shrimp.
“Hey, nothing fried!”
“It’s good enough for you,” Josh pointed out.
“The wulf will keep me from dying of a heart attack. Not her.”
“You’ve been a wulf for less than a month, but you’ve been eating deep-fried takeout for years,” Peter said, laughing.
Busted. I sighed and grabbed a plate.
We ate on the deck, sitting at the picnic table. Josh sat across from me, and I got a chance to really look at him. His eyes appeared sunken with black circles under them. Always lean, his skin had a stretched appearance, as though the bones lay too close beneath. Chris had been gone for a few days now, but this would be familiar for Josh, and I didn’t think it was the cause of the rapid weight loss I noticed. The wulfan with the heart of a pacifist still struggled with having to kill Chloe. Was he eating at all when home alone?
I pushed him a second helping. When Peter dumped a handful of wontons onto Josh’s plate, I realized that he’d seen it too. Josh laughed when I poured on the sweet-and-sour sauce for him.
“Seriously, guys, I’m fine.” He noticed sauce on his hand and lowered it for Keen to lick.
“Stop feeding her junk!” Too late.
“Are you insulting my carefully prepared dinner?” His dark eyebrows danced with amusement.
“She’s gonna get fat. My vet will have a fit.” I frowned at him.
“You are your vet,” Josh pointed out.
“It’s just sauce,” Peter said. “Not like she gets any of the deep-fried stuff.”
We looked at him. He’d been standing right there in the kitchen when I’d given Josh hell for giving Keen the shrimp. Josh glanced at me and gave the slightest of shrugs. Maybe Peter hadn’t heard? But no, he’d commented on me eating them for years. To hide my reaction, I shoveled in a mouthful of chow mein noodles. Peter lost a helluva lot of blood that night. The doc said there could be long-term effects.
We polished off a truckload of food, but Josh had bought enough to ensure leftovers for after our run. For now, we moved to loungers on the deck and finished the meal off with a beer, making casual conversation as the sun sank toward the horizon.
Keen had run with Peter and me for the last two nights, and she spun in circles and barked when we stood and began to strip. Peter and Josh were relaxed with their natural selves, watching as the darkness chased the sun’s rays across the sky. I moved slower, self-conscious of my naked body. If Chris or, heaven help me, Sam, had been there, I would have endured teasing about it. But Peter pretended to not see, and Josh was preoccupied with the horizon, his pale eyes alight with the promise of the letting loose of our wulves.
Peter changed first and fastest, Josh next, and I, still thinking my way through the process, was last. I started with my hands and feet, visualizing the thickening of the fingers and the formation of claws and narrow pads. My jaw lengthened and the teeth moved into place. I grunted when my collarbones popped away, but it wasn’t as painful as the first time. After the initial change, they didn’t completely reattach. My shoulders shifted forward, and the blades changed orientation, standing more upright along my lengthening ribs. I dropped to all fours as my pelvis rotated and my leg muscles thickened, the tendons pulling my ankles off the ground, leaving me on my toes. Finally, a tail burst through my skin as my tailbone straightened and extended. I panted as the last vestiges of pain left me.
Josh’s black mane fell long and thick around his wulfy face, and you could just see the heavily kinked human hair mixed in with the fur. Now a handsome gray beast, Peter cleared the deck railing and landed on the back lawn. The new spring grass tickled my feet as I followed, Keen and Josh hot on my heels.
Keen had to go full out to keep pace, and sometimes we had to wait for her, but tonight I figured she had extra calories to wear off. So we challenged her to a race, leaping off the trail and into the trees, making the trunks and branches sway as we moved through them like great apes, claws gripping bark and powerful legs pushing off to send us forty feet through the air. Then we’d hit the ground, digging our fingers into the soft dirt, coiling our backs to snap our hind legs past the fore, and our front legs adding momentum and direction, lifting just before the hind impacted the dirt. Followed by the glorious leap, airborne as our spines cracked straight and our lungs dragged in air, reaching for the next landing with claws extended toward trees or rock or solid earth. Aware, always aware of every scent and sound, tongues panting through open jaws lined with razor-sharp teeth.
We’d run off the initial burst of crazed energy when a hare flushed directly in front of Peter. In a flash of teeth and snap of his jaws, he caught it. We skidded to a stop. Wulfan hunted, but I’d never seen Peter
